Opposite Man

Whatever Ross Douthat thinks is a good idea, do the opposite.

But there’s another path, equally radical, that’s more in keeping with the traditional American approach to government, taxation and free enterprise. This approach would give up on the costly goal of insuring everyone for everything, forever. Instead, it would seek to insure Americans only against costs that exceed a certain percentage of their income, while expecting them to pay for everyday medical expenditures out of their own pockets.

Such a system would provide universal catastrophic health insurance, in other words, while creating a free market for non-catastrophic care. In the process, it would marry a central conservative insight — that we’ll never control spending so long as Americans are insulated from the true price of their medical care — to the admirable liberal premise that nobody should go bankrupt paying for life-saving treatment.

And of course, the real money in the health care system is to be made from the drugs and treatments and everyday costs. Millions of Americans aren't going to need catastrophic coverage, and it's the little things, from doctor's visits to batteries of tests to preventative care that buries most Americans as they turn to their health insurance only to discover they were never insulated from those "health care payments" Douthat complains about to begin with thanks to the kind of high co-payments he's suggesting are the answer.

Once again, Douthat's solution to the problem is based on the premise that poor people shouldn't get so damn sick. If they didn't, why, then they'd have more money to spend, you see. If the problem of insurance is affordability, how the hell is having everyone purchasing catastrophic going to solve the issue?