Hayek agrees with me!

Ok, that's putting it a bit generously.

Back during the debate... well, back when the debate over Obamacare was just getting revved up, I made the point to all who would listen that the legislative effort was not about universal health care. In fact, if that was the goal, there was a much cheaper, healthier, more freedom respecting way to go about doing it:

Step 1: Let markets work! Both in the provision of health care services directly and in how they are financed. Competitive markets, more than any other power on this planet, drive efficiency. The outcomes would be lower real costs in service, along with higher quality.

Step 2: Give direct assistance to those who can't afford health care services. Look, if you're going to declare access to health care services an affirmative right, to be provided by the government, then you should go about implementing it in the otherwise most efficient way possible. Let the markets work. It's just about the exact same argument as the school choice argument, though perhaps with or without the same Establishment Clause issues that would lead me to support education tax credits over vouchers. I don't know, I haven't given that bit a lot of thought.

Anyway, any form of relief will have it drawbacks, but surely this would be far and away a better system than either the one that existed before Obamacare, or the one that will replace it. It leaves the markets intact (or as intact as possible), and actually achieves universal coverage, which one of the most leftist presidents in recent history couldn't even pull off with a sympathetic Congress.

Oh yeah, the title. Hayek said more-or-less the same thing:

http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2010/07/11/so-hayek-basically-had-ezra-kleins-views-on-health-care-right/

nod to Angus at KPC for pointing that link out