How Health Care Became a Financialized Hellhole

But the nation’s center-left and center-right were both determined to prove that they were pro-market, and that markets could solve the problem, so they advanced instead the idea of an “individual mandate,” a brainchild of the Heritage Foundation, that would force everyone to buy the same insurance, priced at similar rates. But at some point the certain cost exceeds the hypothetical benefit, and that point is long past; even measured solely in the typical family’s expected health; especially when the forced cross-subsidy from younger and healthier to older and sicker is designed specifically to benefit the latter at the expense of the former. In all cases, we will resist the financial abstraction of the subsidy fights and the insurance fights and the tax fights, arguing instead for health care policy that helps families build decent and healthy lives, that supports care when it is needed, and that relies upon insurance for the rare situations to which such financial products are suited.

Author: Oren Cass

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