L. Randall Wray from the Levy Institute, just wrote a great follow up on his previous healthcare article. You can find it here. I also highly encourage you to read his Levy Economics Institute paper on Health Insurance. It’s available here.

Basically, Wray reiterates what I’ve stated many times in the past: Paying for healthcare via insurance is completely absurd. In Wray’s words:

“Healthcare is not insurable. There is a fundamental conflict between provision of healthcare and insurance.”

This is because by virtue of the fact that we are human and are born into this world, we will all require healthcare. We will all get sick at some point or another. Some may suffer more than others, unfortunately, but we all need healthcare of one form or another. This is not some uncertain and improbable risk, which insurance is designed for. This is a certain and 100% probable risk. You can’t use insurance for that. And if you do, it’s bound to be ridiculously expensive and entirely ineffective.

What is needed, I imagine, is a new approach to paying for healthcare that eliminates most private and profit-seeking enterprises (at least as currently constituted). Incredibly, if the government would have taken the $3 trillion+ it printed to bail out Wall Street and pay Wall Street bonuses, and instead funneled that money into healthcare, we’d basically be off private health insurance already.

But, instead of creating the means for a healthier society which ultimately increases economic productivity, we’ve printed money to uphold imaginary and worthless securities that have no social benefits whatsoever. Explain to me again why democratic capitalism is the best economic system?