Mandatory Health Care

Hillary's new health care plan is similar to a lot of the other Donk candidates and also Arnold Schwarzenegger's for California.

Basically the idea is that you make health care mandatory and then figure out how to pay for coverage for poor folks.

What I like about these plans:

1. They are mandatory. Which helps lower some costs by including healthy young 24 year olds who otherwise wouldn't be in the insurance pool. (Now that I am middle-aged, I have no problem making them pay for insurance they may not need.)

Political Bonus: No more stories about the "millions of uninsured." I'm sure it will be replaced by "just above the cut-off for aid, yet still struggling" but hey.

2. The poor are covered, and via a direct subsidy that is transparent. We can set how generous we want to be. I would also include a plan for a non-profit organization that liberals could donate to that would fund this health care plan before we had to have taxes kick in. I wonder why those don't already exist?

Political Bonus: How many times poverty level will be considered needy? Maybe we can have some media stories showing how some family can't afford health-care but has a 47" Plasma on installment from Best Buy?

3. Most importantly, as long as any of these proposals just makes it mandatory to have insurance, with a state subsidy, it's not government-run health care and the free market is still completely involved. I guess it does impinge on the individual's liberty, and this is why libertarians will hate these ideas. I would suggest having an opt-out clause but that sort of ruins the effect of point 1.

What I don't like about these plans:

1. They keep making companies pay for their employee's insurance. There is nothing wrong with that, it's just factored as part of your wages and benefits, but it does make worker's worry about changing jobs. If companies did not provide insurance and it was paid for by workers, it would be "portable" and they would worry a little bit less about trying to switch companies or careers. Also, since health benefits are not taxed while wages are, there may have been an incentive to favor these over wages by both employer and employee.

2. These plans sometimes try to lower the cost of health care by fiat, or pay for it via taxes on doctors, etc. I am not sure that is a good idea. Let the market offer different plans and people choose them. Yes, insurance is complicated, so maybe you can have one simple government plan as a default, but I would guess once health insurance was decoupled from your employer, they would have to work harder to please the actual consumer. I could be wrong there, but you could always choose GovCare so why not?