Sounds like a campaign strategy by Karl Rove!   But these are the only people who will be spending health care dollars in their old age, in Beckie’s grand plan.   A good one it is too.   Despite being reasonably well-versed as a frequently injured layperson concerned with his health care bill and a 2-semester grad student in bioethics, this was a notion I have never heard of before.

This won’t be a long rant, but its no mystery that the US industry is plagued by all the wrong incentives in health care consumption.   The consumer is not cost-conscious cause of insurance, the doctor spends too much out of fear of lawsuits, and insurance is concerned more with its process than the individual.   Instead of rationing by wait time like other countries, we don’t ration at all, and have created a culture of unchecked   medical entitlement.   We don’t have a valid calculator of risk, we blame smokers who likely cost less than obese people, births are treated like coming-out parties instead of one of the most predictable and commonplace procedures of all time, and a ridiculously disproportionate amount of money is spent when the quality of life it supports offers minimal returns.

Dental spending is the ideal model – individuals bear a significant portion of their own costs, prices are accurately quoted by providers, costs are affected by supply and demand, information is transparent, and doctors are used to acting as expert consultants instead of all-knowing medicine men.

Beckie’s idea: everyone gets a finite amount to spend over the course of their life, anything beyond is paid out of pocket. Anything left when you die goes to your heirs’ fund. Market incentives and personal choice would cause much more efficient use of your funds. The only really old sick people opting for costly treatments would be those not believing in an afterlife, or those afraid of it. Brilliant.