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Krugmanism of the Day

This is interesting:

I believe that universal health care has to be THE central item in a progressive agenda

I\’m pretty sure that universal health care has been achieved in the US: at least as much as universal health care has been so in the UK.

What people have been arguing for is universal health insurance, a very different concept.

5 thoughts on “Krugmanism of the Day”

  1. “What people have been arguing for is universal health insurance, a very different concept.”

    But Lord Darzi, the health minister, in an interview on the BBCR4 Today programme, said that Britain’s NHS is the envy of the world. I heard him say it.

  2. Frankly, I would think that the progressive agenda would skip health care entirely and move directly to immortality.

  3. And millions of those people “fall through the net” out of choice. A majority of people who are uninsured are younger lower middle class people who can buy insurance but choose to spend their money in other ways.

    One of the biggest problems with insurance in the US is that it is mostly one-size-fits-all employer group insurance, so most people don’t know what it is really worth. If it were treated as an optional payroll item with a price tag on the payslip, I suspect a lot more people would elect not to get medical insurance.

    On the other hand, if medical insurance was available on a tailorable individual level, rather than provided through large megalithic plans, it would be a lot cheaper and a lot more people would purchase it.

    And by the way, every NHS hospital I have ever visited is in far worse shape than the worst government-run or -subsidised hospitals in the US. And the only other place where I have encountered the arrogance of NHS doctors (yes some of them are nice, too) is when US military doctors dealt with me as an enlisted guy.

  4. This doesn’t look encouraging news about Hillary Clinton’s proposals for introducing a federal healthcare insurance scheme in America if she is elected President.

    “Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to introduce comprehensive health insurance in California at a cost of $15bn lay in tatters on Monday when the state’s legislature voted to block the proposal.”
    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b77eb5f6-ce0c-11dc-9e4e-000077b07658.html

    By other reports, an estimated 46 million Americans have no cover for healthcare costs and “The leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States is unpaid medical bills.”
    http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/08/29/050829fa_fact

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