Friday, November 30, 2007

Questions Regarding Health Care

The United States seems to have the best health care in the world for people at the top of the chain, in the same way that Harvard and Yale are the best in the world in education. But this does not mean that the U.S. has better health care or education, necessarily.

We do know that the United States lags many European and British Commonwealth countries in average life expectancy and average high school scholastic achievement, so it is difficult to be dogmatic about these issues.

Regardless of what one's feeling about national healthcare are, one thing that it does not necessarily have to entail is the destruction of a competing private sector. Hillary Clinton did a huge disservice to her own general idea because many people now believe that any national system now has to be "socialized" and obligatiory as opposed to merely guaranteeing payment.

No matter how much libertarians and Republicans how that this issue is going away, it will not because they have failed to address three facets that the free market cannot adequately remedy:

1. Uninsured children
2. Unavailability of coverage for pre-existing conditions
3. Payment for potentially enormous outlays for coverage of questionable treatment.

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