Posted here because I couldn’t do a good job explaining this at dinner last night: Why is competition between health insurance companies useful?
This is not the world we live in, but it is the world we should aim for and I am more than willing to consider how government might get us there. (Mandating greater price transparency is but one step.) But if we institute a single-payer system, or highly regulated mandates, we will never have much chance of arriving in that world. Ever. We will have a fairly static sector with high coverage levels but rising costs long term and less innovation.