Universal Coverage: Endorse the Concept
Tens of millions of Americans lack health insurance. Extending coverage to them has been a core goal of health reform proposals since the 1960s. President Richard Nixon offered a universal health plan in his first administration, but since then Republicans have hesitated to commit the nation to so costly an undertaking. Is it time to rethink? Should Republicans accept universal coverage as a goal? We posed this question to NewMajority's contributors.
Absolutely, the time has come for Republicans to endorse the concept of universal coverage. The current system, as President Obama is so fond of saying, is broken.
We should not claim this is because of a so-called "market failure" (it takes some serious cojones to argue that the U.S. health insurance system operates in a free market). By and large, the system has failed so many millions of Americans because of burdensome government regulations. Two egregious examples stand out: laws that prohibit Californians from buying low-cost Wyoming insurance, and the tying of health insurance to employment (a disaster in this generation of constantly shuffling careers).
Newt Gingrich once suggested that we could ultimately have a "300 million payer" system. This should be the goal of the Republican Party: everyone covered, but not through government healthcare; but through government systematically breaking down the barriers to a competitive health insurance market in the United States.
Then, and only then, should the government turn its attention to issues that could seriously raise the possibility of a "market failure": catastrophic care and certain pre-existing conditions that could become too expensive to insure for individuals.
To read other contributions to this symposium, click here.