Healthcare: private VS public
Paul Krugman is a pretty smart guy but his recent column on health insurance left me with a sour taste in my mouth. He rails against commercial health insurance providers using pre-existing conditions and sophisticated screening to discriminate amongst customers when it comes to the premiums they must pay for this insurance. Well, duh! That sounds like what auto insurers do. Why should health insurance be any different? Because healthcare is a basic human right (unlike driving)? OK, fine, but who is going to pay for that healthcare? It doesn't make sense to force private enterprise into a contract where they are likely to lose money. That's not capitalism! If you want to provide healthcare to everybody, including those who are very likely to require expensive treatment, then it can't be funded by individuals via insurance because that just doesn't work. To have universal healthcare a single payer system is needed, although the actual treatment can be provided via a competitive marketplace like Canada has. Calling it insurance is just confusing if you also want universal coverage.
