More utopian (dystopian?) health care plans

Your body is scanned and monitored by implanted bots; the fight against terrorism made that necessary anyway.  All insurance based on the idea of expense reimbursement is banned.  But if you get sick, they send you some money.  Plain ol’ cash, to spend as you please.  (Off-line we can debate whether this is the government, the private sector, or some mix.) 

This would address cost escalation, boost equity, and eliminate the risk of being bounced by an insurance company, the three core problems cited by Brad DeLong.

The monitors also help us pay wealth-maximizing bonuses for those who get their prostates checked every month.

Larry Kotlikoff has proposed some version of this, minus the scanners and the check-up bonuses.

Keep in mind that standard single-payer plans give the poor, by the standard of their own preferences, far too much health care.  Let’s say a pauper received the same standard of care as a rich man; he would rather have the value in cash instead.  I suspect many of these people would rather have 50 cents in cash than $1 in health care, so right there many of these plans are losing half of their value per dollar spent.

Comments

Comments for this post are closed