In an article in the New Republic, Brian Beutler writes about the Republican effort to come up with an alternative to Obamacare. He says:

Unless Republicans want to move the U.S. health care system in a radically different direction, all that’s left to haggle over are the details.

Unfortunately, Beutler is absolutely right. On health care, Republicans and Democrats share the same goal: to create a society in which if you can’t pay for medical services, the government confiscates other people’s money to pay for those services.

The only thing that divides Republicans and Democrats is how they want to go about achieving this goal.

For example, in order to force healthy Americans to foot the medical bills of those less healthy, Obamacare requires the former to buy
overpriced health insurance. Those on the right prefer that this wealth transfer be enforced by creating a separate entitlement program for sick Americans (they call these programs “high-risk pools”).

Another example: in order to coerce higher-income Americans into paying for the care of lower-income Americans, Obamacare expands eligibility for the public program Medicaid. Conservatives prefer that lower-income individuals instead receive subsidies for private coverage.

The only way to offer a meaningful alternative to Obamacare, rather than just “haggling over the details,” is to
call out the law for what it really is: an immoral program that entitles individuals to services paid for and produced by others. The “radically different direction” in which American health care must move is towards
capitalism, a system in which people aren’t viewed as servants of society but individuals with the
right to pursue their own happiness.