Friday, September 06, 2013

Path Dependence

It's really great that John has given a  health insurance professional a forum to explain how this stuff works.  I expect it will work out much like the Syria debate has--exposing the absence of any public benefit to a health care system of for-profit providers administered by for-profit gatekeepers with prices set in secret by the providers.  In the OECD countries that use private sector administrators ("insurance companies"), they are closely regulated by the government--so well that, for instance, in the German private insurance system there is effectively universal participation with no individual mandate.

It always makes me laugh to see statements like this:
I agree with the vast majority of the commenteriat here that absent massive path dependency... , I would not choose the US model or the modifications to the model that are being made by Obamacare. 
The US has a single payer system in place already. Just change the Medicare eligibility age. Set premiums. Compete!

Update: complete sentence in quote