I caught a little of Ann Coulter on the Behar show and when Ann suggested that people buy limited (catastrophic) insurance, the retort was that people couldn’t afford to buy it. Which seems to be a common argument against any conservative proposal.

The generally accepted number of people who honestly can’t afford health insurance is 9 million. The rest of the 47 million are people who qualify for medicaid and haven’t signed up; choose not to buy insurance, but could afford it; or are illegals.

So instead of adding those nine million to Medicaid, which would increase Medicaid rolls by 15%, Democrats are willing to damage the health insurance of 80%, or 260 million people. The reasons are transparent and have been discussed many times on this blog– power. Power to dole out benefits to an additional segment of society, making more Americans beholden to those in power. Consolidating power.

Some facts about Medicaid:
•Medicaid covers 60 million low-income people, including 29.4 million children, 15.2 million adults, 8.2 million people with disabilities and 6.1 million seniors.
•More people than any other single health care program in the U.S., including Medicare.
•Medicaid is the largest children’s health program in the country.
•Medicaid is the nation’s primary long-term care program, accounting for 43 percent of total long-term care spending and paying for nearly 60 percent of nursing home residents.
•Medicaid covers over 40 percent of the poor.
•Medicaid covers one in five people with severe disabilities.

I would consider an idea where the government required catastrophic insurance and individuals would then be free to purchase additional insurance for other care, such as chiropractic, or acupuncture, or pregnancy, etc, setting the threshold to say, $10,000 and pay 80% up to $20,00 and then 100% after that.
Individuals could choose whether they wanted to be responsible for their portion, or buy additional coverage for that first $14,000.
Sort of the model of automobile insurance, where all drivers are required to carry basic liability, but comprehensive and collision are optional.
Medical care in this country is expensive enough that I don’t think it is prudent to force the tax payer to be on the hook when an individual who chooses not to be insured suffers a serious illness.

Those folks who truly can’t afford to pay for their deductable would be treated in Medicaid.
We know an additional reason why Democrats would never propose such a system and the expansion of Medicaid. Medicaid is broke! Since the American taxpayer is reluctant to increase funding to welfare (and justifiably so), Democrats are going the long way around to achieve their goals of raising taxes, excuse me– enhanced revenues, to subsidize increased coverage for their target constituency.