Should the Government Provide Medicare For All? David Goldhill vs. Jacob Hacker in NYC on September 19
This month's Soho Forum features a debate on socialized health insurance.
Should the government offer a Medicare-like health insurance plan to all Americans? That's the debate resolution at this month's Soho Forum, the Reason Foundation's Oxford-style debate series held monthly in New York City. The September 19th event will kick off the Soho Forum's second season, and it'll be an exciting evening.
Arguing for the affirmative will be Jacob Hacker, a Yale political scientist and author of the 2016 book American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper.
Professor Hacker will be squaring off against David Goldhill, the former CEO of GSN and author of the exceptional 2013 book, Catastrophic Care: How American Health Care Killed My Father—and How We Can Fix It, which grew out of a much-discussed 2009 cover story in the Atlantic.
The Soho Forum has a two-fold mission: to provide an arena for intellectual adversaries to talk in paragraphs (as opposed to 140 characters), and "to enhance social and professional ties within New York City's libertarian community." It's held at the Subculture Theater at 45 Bleecker Street in Manhattan, and after the debate wraps there's free food, a cash bar, and everyone's encouraged to hang out and chat. Doors open at 5:45, and the event convenes at 6:30—at which point the party has already begun.
Tickets, which must be reserved in advance, are $18 and $10 for students. Get them here.
You'll be able to watch and listen to the event on both Reason TV and the Reason Podcast a week or two after the event.
Subscribe to the Reason Podcast at iTunes.
Subscribe to Reason TV at YouTube.
Watch Kmele Foster's 2014 Reason interview with David Goldhill about his book:
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Yes, the government is doing such a bang-up job at running Medicare and Medicaid and all that. I don't see how anything could possibly go wrong.
Right now Medicare recipients only get back about 3 times what they put in. I'm sure by extending Medicare to everyone we can get that number even higher!
We already have 100 million Americans on government single-payer health care. Convince me that's a huge success and that it's not eating out the substance of the public treasury and I'll go along with whatever you want.
Any book called American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper carries the srong implication of thinking government made America prosper, and that's so damned silly that I can't even begin to think of any reason to read it, or reviews of it, or listen to the author.
Sure to be a big success if run like the VA.
Yeah, the only thing worse than single-payer is single-provider.
Should the government offer a Medicare-like health insurance plan to all Americans?
No.
Do we really need to debate this? As libertarians? If you say 'yes', you're not a libertarian. Simple.
Why is this even being debated?
There is zero authority in the Constitution for government anything involving healthcare/health insurance.
Just tell these little socialist children that they get nothing. zero. zip.
Cut spending by 50%+
Becausethere are a lot of economic idiots out there.