Given everyone has “health” needs and we as a society have agreed to cover everyones cost via taxes (directly and/or/in combination with “Medicaid”) to pay for the ER if they have no insurance. But the odds are only 55/45 in favor of the USSC OK’ing the law.

Meanwhile ,while Medicare for all is a better approach, the mandated with minor “punishment” ins route can work as proven in Japan (and Germany).

But to work it needs the other two things Japan has mandatory that we do not – that all health service centers/hospitals be non-profit, and that all service providers and drug pushers charge the exact same price for a given service or drug with that price being the one that the government announces each year.

Without cost containment at this level – and not a “marketplace (read local monopoly)” level – there is no hope for our economy. I was well in my 5th decade in the industry, at a management level, when I retired – and I know how prices will be set if the only current brake on cost – namely the few states that have minimum loss ratios for claims relative to premiums – is bypassed by selling across state lines. If Fox News is in favor it seems the truth is always the opposite – at least in the health care debate.

Meanwhile Japan claims a low 1% GDP growth per year over 20 years to hide its prosperity and does this by doing the reverse of Greenspan – the Greenspan very low inflation adjustment to GDP is based on Greenspan’s over-estimate of “quality improvement” and his outrageous “substitution” modification that reduces inflation when steak goes up and you switch to hamburger.  So Japan sees little improvement in the quality of life from a base model PC going from 40 gig hard drive to an 80 gig hard drive, and does not play games with “substitution”.   So as Fox tells us about the “Lost decades”in Japan all caused by the very bad deficit spending that has debt to GDP of 100%, the reality is that Japan is doing just fine as her factories replace US factories due to our lack of tariffs and internal barriers to imports.