Or, taxes don't change enough to move the needle on health insurance affordability.
We further deregulate the insurance market, and the private insurers of last resort in several locales move to more profitable markets.
Meanwhile, the insurers in the states with the greatest consumer protections move to the venues with the least consumer protections, producing a net decline in health care quality for the entire country. With barriers to interstate insurance removed, the industry is also free to concentrate itself through M&A.
While that's happening, the adverse selection problem with health insurance continues to fester, as our "free market", in enabling "the pursuit of happiness" for everyone, especially 20-something bachelors, cons the whole consumer market into believing they can free-ride into their 40s (or their first child) and then get reasonable insurance, while draining the entire risk pool of all the low-risk patients.
Those same 20-something bachelors show up in emergency rooms, bankrupting themselves over broken bones --- but no problem, by the time they're old enough to care about their credit rating, the only people who will care about this health event are the hospitals and doctors, who will raise rates on everyone else to cover.
At the same time, nothing is done to address the fundamental problem that even in the most consumer-friendly venues, tens of thousands of totally normal families are unable to obtain private insurance coverage at any rate because of preexisting condition coverage.
We further deregulate the insurance market, and the private insurers of last resort in several locales move to more profitable markets.
Meanwhile, the insurers in the states with the greatest consumer protections move to the venues with the least consumer protections, producing a net decline in health care quality for the entire country. With barriers to interstate insurance removed, the industry is also free to concentrate itself through M&A.
While that's happening, the adverse selection problem with health insurance continues to fester, as our "free market", in enabling "the pursuit of happiness" for everyone, especially 20-something bachelors, cons the whole consumer market into believing they can free-ride into their 40s (or their first child) and then get reasonable insurance, while draining the entire risk pool of all the low-risk patients.
Those same 20-something bachelors show up in emergency rooms, bankrupting themselves over broken bones --- but no problem, by the time they're old enough to care about their credit rating, the only people who will care about this health event are the hospitals and doctors, who will raise rates on everyone else to cover.
At the same time, nothing is done to address the fundamental problem that even in the most consumer-friendly venues, tens of thousands of totally normal families are unable to obtain private insurance coverage at any rate because of preexisting condition coverage.
I'm totally sold.