President-elect Donald Trump has been in the news lately, suggesting his plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act would keep the parts that people like. By this, he’s referring primarily to the provision that prevents health insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
Of course, the trouble here is that all of the destructive parts of the Affordable Care Act were the (utterly unsuccessful) attempt to make coverage of pre-existing conditions sustainable. New evidence of this failure comes in all the time.
Perhaps even more important than the Affordable Care Act’s failure, however, are the reasons that the US health insurance system was broken even before President Obama courageously stepped in to make it worse. You may be shocked to learn that, in fact, much of the absurdity of the US health insurance model was created by other bad government policies.
In other words, the crisis that led to the Affordable Care Act, and the current crisis that has some calling for an even more aggressive government intervention, were actually caused, in whole or in part, by previous misguided policies. Intervention really does beget intervention, in foreign policy and economic policy alike.
The latest episode of Contra Krugman from Bob Murphy and Tom Woods offers an exceptional overview of this subject–the inner workings of the Affordable Care Act and the earlier interventions that harmed the healthcare system. They also provide some excellent insights into how health insurance might look in a freer market.
Well worth your time if you’re remotely interested in the topic. Here’s the link:
Why It’s Impossible to Keep Only the “Good Parts” of Obamacare
