Obamacare: Fixing the Mess (for 1Bad65)

[dimethylsea]

This one is for 1Bad65....

In another thread you said..

Reaganomics.

..snip...

Reagan also predicted the USSR would bankrupt themselves, and he was right on that one too.

Why did the USSR bankrupt themselves? They were unable to match US defense spending, despite having far more commitment by their elites to win the Cold War, more natural resources to call on, a larger population than the US etc.

Well the usual reason given is the lack of price signals in a command economy yielding decreased productivity and growth, increased percentage of GDP in defense spending and wham.. down comes the Berlin Wall.

So that being the case.. let's talk about Obamacare. What's the connection?

Well if Reagan had had his druthers.. he could have attempted diplomacy and "easing of tensions", moved in the direction of disarmament etc. and made it "easier" for the USSR to compete. If he had.. the USSR might still be around.

He choose not to do this. He choose to "up the ante".. believing that the USSR could not "match his stakes".

My question 1Bad65 is this...
Why is American healthcare fundamentally broken.. in such a way that Obama could be elected on a platform of "reforming it" (i.e. socializing it)?

I would suggest 4 fundamental flaws.. all of them connected to "too much government"..
1. The accident of "employer provided insurance"
2. Licensure laws
3. Obesity and it's connections to government agricultural subsidies
4. Intellectual property and it's resulting increased costs for health care.

Think of our present healthcare system as the USSR. It's socialized already.
So do we want to let it slowly meander to the grave (imagine a USSR existing right now in 2010... ).. or "up the ante" Reagan style.. and applaud the commissars and the apparatchik who want to take things in an even more statist direction (knowing this will surely make the whole thing fail faster and give an opportunity for real meaningful change once the vested interests have been broken by their failure)?

What do you think 1Bad65? (if any of those aforementioned 4 fundamental flaws is something you aren't familiar with I'll be happy to explain it).