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Anti-Universal Coverage Club
Cato’s Michael Cannon has launced the Anti-Universal Coverage Club, which questions the dogmatic mantra of “universal” health insurance. The guiding principles of the Anti-Universal Coverage Club are:
- 1. Health policy should focus on making health care of ever-increasing quality available to an ever-increasing number of people.
- 2. To achieve “universal coverage” would require either having the government provide health insurance to everyone or forcing everyone to buy it. Government provision is undesirable, because government does a poor job of improving quality or efficiency. Forcing people to get insurance would lead to a worse health-care system for everyone, because it would necessitate so much more government intervention.
- 3. In a free country, people should have the right to refuse health insurance.
- 4. If governments must subsidize those who cannot afford medical care, they should be free to experiment with different types of subsidies (cash, vouchers, insurance, public clinics & hospitals, uncompensated care payments, etc.) and tax exemptions, rather than be forced by a policy of “universal coverage” to subsidize people via “insurance.
Even Jesus, Moses and Muhammad would agree with that. I’m just kidding, I know they support the Rendell plan.