The socialist vanguard seizing control of the Democratic Party has it right: Private health insurance is not the best way to the provide the highest value care to the widest number of Americans.
But unlike Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Republican Rep. Chip Roy understands that health insurance in any form, public or private, isn’t the solution.
Roy earned the mockery of Vox’s Matthew Yglesias for retweeting the notion that we’re “addicted” to health insurance. But Roy is right.
House Republican @chiproytx wants to cure people of their addiction to having health insurance pic.twitter.com/6FQrtEMGg2
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) September 16, 2019
By design, insurance is intended to protect purchasers from random or at least somewhat unpredictable events. Car insurance is scaled based on previous driving history, so that riskier drivers pay more. But given the unpredictability of collisions, everyone has to have car insurance. The same goes for fire insurance and life insurance and any other kind of wager protecting you from acts of God.
But your health is different.
Three out of four adults do not have a preexisting health condition. For many years, an adult of a normal weight had a predictable relationship with his or her doctor: routine checkups that cost your caregiver little, annual exams for women, and vaccines every so often. You may get strep throat or some other illness that requires an extra visit or two with labs, but consider, does the cost of the service you’re getting ever come close to your annual premiums and co-pays?
Roy has been pushing against the broken paradigm of how we think about healthcare for the entirety of his short but promising tenure in the House. His Healthcare Freedom Act would allow Americans to use tax-free Health Savings Accounts for direct primary care packages, colloquially known as concierge care. Consumers would thus limit the role of private health insurance to covering real health emergencies. Under a direct care model, they would pay their doctors a subscription for access when they need it, and then buy a separate, cheaper health insurance plan for catastrophic coverage.
For too long, Republicans have lied to their constituents and let Democrats shape the narrative of the healthcare debate. A decade after Obamacare promised that if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, Democrats now want to push private health insurers out of the conversation altogether. Roy understands that they’re right. The difference is that it can come from consumer choice, not force.
