Quick points on healthcare

I think the following facts are ingnored by both conservatives, liberals, and yes libertarians.

1. We are already paying for everyone's healthcare. Just right now we often wait till it reaches the point of being emergency care, and so it costs more. So people who complain about not wanting to subsidize other people need to wake up because we already do. The only way that would change is if we stop providing emergency care to people, but that's just not going to happen.

2. If we accept point 1, then are mission is to try and provide healthcare in the most efficient and cost effective method provided. I think most of us would agree that will require people paying for their own healthcare costs as much as possible. For example, right now the connection between healthy lifestyle choices, and healthcare costs is broken. If you restore it and make people pay for their own choices (shocking) then people will start to make better choices, and total costs will come down. Ideally this would mean that people's premiums would be tied to their health and lifestyle choices.

3. Now accepting points 1 and 2, we ask what about poor people. Since they normally don't pay for their own healthcare anyway, how could you tie their premiums into their healthcare. Obivously with some type of refundable credit. Broken down this means you are paying some people to remain healthy. Not nessecarily a plesant thought, but IMO an inescapable one.

In general it costs $2400 a year ($200 a month) or so to insure a healthy person, but the costs quickly clime to $6000 a year or more to treat someone with any number of chornic ailments that are prinipally caused by poor lifestyle choices. We need to restore the direct link between healthy living, and medical costs. Once we do that we can begin to lower overall medical costs that are in danger of bankrupting our country.