Joinin' the Club...

Cato Institute Fellow Michael Cannon has a new project, and we're pretty excited to be a part of it. The Anti–Universal Coverage Club "is a list of scholars and citizens who reject the idea that government should ensure that all individuals have health insurance. It exists to challenge the idea that “universal coverage” is the best way to protect and promote health."

We were invited to join early on, and we did; it seems like a good way to judge the depth of interest on this side of the debate.

The underlying principles of the AUCC are:

■ Health policy should focus on making health care of ever-increasing quality available to an ever-increasing number of people.

■ “Universal coverage” could be achieved only by forcing everyone to buy health insurance or by having government provide health insurance to all, neither of which is desirable.

■ In a free society, people should have the right to refuse health insurance.

■ If governments must subsidize those who cannot afford medical care, they should be free to experiment with different types of subsidies (cash, vouchers, insurance, public clinics & hospitals, uncompensated care payments, etc.) and tax exemptions, rather than be forced by a policy of “universal coverage” to subsidize people via “insurance.”

Seems pretty straightforward to us, and apparently to quite a few others: in addition to IB, members include such diverse folks as the Illinois Policy Institute, big time econblogger Arnold Kling, even Andrew Sullivan (that one stopped me cold).

We'll have more on the 'Club as details become available.

[A big Thank You to Tom Tullis for the terrific graphic]