Ramesh Ponnuru Joins the Anti‐Universal Coverage Club
From his excellent article [$] on health care reform in the most recent issue of National Review:
No matter how cheap free‐market reform made basic insurance policies, some people, chiefly the young, would not buy them. Republican reformers are divided about what to do about these holdouts. Some of them believe that they should be forced to buy insurance, so that they would not visit emergency rooms and send everyone else’s premiums higher. Others argue that the premium increase is small, and the risks of mandatory coverage large. The Urban Institute estimates that uncompensated care is less than 3 percent of health spending. Eliminating that cost through forced coverage would require the government to define a basic benefits package, which would be an invitation to provider groups to lobby the government to re‐create the mandates that state governments have piled on insurance. My own view is that, in a fairly free system, the holdouts should be left to do as they please.
Click here for more on the Anti‐Universal Coverage Club.
