Obviously, health care is a terrible challenge to the system. Seventy percent of people have first-class health care that they don’t pay for, and 30 percent have various levels of inferior care that they generally do pay for, until they have run out of resources; and, in the case of the majority, the providers (if corporations) and the recipients both enjoy favorable tax treatment. The tyranny of the satisfied majority is therefore understandable and intractable. Health care costs $7,000 per capita per annum in the United States, against about $3,000 in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom, countries whose standards of living and medical care are roughly comparable.
It is too complicated an issue to take very far here. But we could start with the Republican platform of four years ago and give a $2,500 tax credit to everyone to use at the individual’s choice, open insurance competition completely, tax as income the health benefits above a reasonable average level, insure the financially disadvantaged and those threatened with that condition by catastrophic health problems, cap malpractice awards, and oblige the pharmaceutical companies to charge American customers for drugs at price scales similar to those enjoyed by the other nations mentioned above.
One legal challenge to Obamacare is interesting. For centuries, it has been a hard principle in law that a coerced contract is not a contract. Since Obamacare will force people to buy an insurance product, it will violate that principle. It must be rejected. Instead, policies like those listed could be given a chance. Would that our politicians could speak as forthrightly as does our ex-convict author here.