Did you know that Bernie Sanders has a "plan" to take $5k from middle-class taxpayers and use powerful magics to turn it into $10k worth of health insurance coverage? Yeah, it's ludicrous and I think he might be a senile old man who has watched the Lord Of The Rings movies too many times and thinks he's a Gandalf-like wizard. How many times did he roll his 20-sided die when devising his healthcare plan, I wonder?
Yet there are some informed voters out there who buy it. Voters who know that all the OECD countries (including the ones that are classified as low-income) have some kind of health care for all. And they also know that health care costs in those countries are much lower than here in the US (US per capita spending for healthcare is $4,631, compared with an OECD median of $1,983).
However, as a Libertarian I believe that it was government interference that created this whole mess of out-of-control healthcare costs; the wage-controls of the 1940s which created the incentive for employers to offer health insurance to their employees as a substitute for raises (an act that really got the ball rolling on this whole idiotic third-party payer bullshit).
Sure, even if any of that is true there is nothing we can do about it now. Misinformed morons such as myself can continue to dream the Libertarian fantasy in which the (imaginary) "free market" drives prices down so low that upper middle class and wealthy folks can afford to pay for their health care needs out of pocket (those in lower classes can drop dead for all I care).
Meanwhile, more rational folks (those people residing in the REAL world) realize that following the lead of all the other OECD countries (who have PROVEN this can be done) is the way to go. ALthough I am NOT such a person, so excuse me if I dismiss out-of-hand this inarticulate socialist buffoon who thinks that HIS intervention is going to rectify things. Trust me, it won't. By which I mean it COULD. But going to a not-for-profit system will devastate the profits of Big Health Care.
However, in the opinion of someone who loves our wealthy overlords, doing health care for NO PROFIT (for christ!) is quite stupid. Do we really want to live in a world where a select few can't get uber-wealthy at the expense of a large number of losers (who must die for this to occur)? I know I sure as hell don't!
Byline: This commentary was authored by Willis "I Love Strawmen" Hart. Purveyor of Libertarian magic. LLIN-200.
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