Universal Seduction and Distraction

The provision of employer based tax preferred health coverage in response to WWII wage and price controls has been with us for over 50 years. Medicare and Medicaid with their growing set of rules and regulations have been around for over 40 years now. The cumulative effect of these items have driven us further from a market based approach to health care than most people realize. Reforms that move us in the direction of consumer driven free market based care and insurance are more likely to help improve things as compared with a more regulated or collectivist approaches. Arnold Kling presents a pretty good article describing the calls for universal coverage to be a distraction:

The main proponents of "universal coverage" want to throw more money at the current health care system, which strikes me as unwise. I believe that the "universal coverage" mantra is dysfunctional for the same reason that "more money for public schools" is a dysfunctional mantra for education. When your current approach is digging you into a hole, the sensible thing to do is not to dig faster. It is to stop digging.

"Universal coverage" is a popular solution in health care. Too bad it does not address the important problems. Even economists on the liberal side of the spectrum recognize that broader reforms are needed.

My thought is that calls for universal coverage are worse than a distraction. They are a seduction that if mommy or daddy government takes care of it we can rest easy. Looking around the globe, I don't find this to be an attractive idea.