Universal Catastrophic Coverage

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The increasing predictability of healthcare risks means that only insurance companies are willing to insure healthy people. NISCAIN and Center promote a paradoxical idea, an oxymoronic idea, called the free market welfare state. People should pay for their own healthcare to the extent that they are able to, financially able to, says John Avlon. The government should protect them only from financially ruin us healthcare spending, he adds.

Economist Ed Dolan of the Niskanen Center talks about employer-based health insurance with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Dolan discusses how unusual it is relative to other countries that so many Americans get their health insurance through their employer and the implications of that phenomenon for the structure of the health insurance market. Dolan explores the drawbacks of this structure and makes the case for what he calls Universal Catastrophic Coverage.