An argument isn't just contradiction. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition. Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says.
No it isn't.
I do not enjoy wasting my time repeating something that I have clarified several times in the thread, but here goes. Each calendar year, each person gets $5,000 credited to their bank account. It is their money to keep. Except that, if at least $1,000 wasn't spent on health care during the year (as documented by receipts that providers should, ..., um, provide), then the balance of the $1,000 not spent, is refunded to the government. As for practical implementation of the refund, I suppose it can work like a tax, or perhaps a reduction in the next year's allotment.
The purpose of the $5,000 is not necessarily to provide somebody with $5,000 worth of health care. It is to provide them with $5,000 of means. This policy combines the ideas of a minimum income, an economic stimulus, and a means to purchase health care if needed, all in one package.
Note that money is not a real resource, but rather an accounting method for allocating real resources. Giving people money is not wasteful. Using real resources non-optimally is wasteful. Paying somebody to dig a hole and fill it back in again is wasteful. Simply giving them the same amount of money and not requiring them to waste their labor is not. Although it might prove to cause waste as a consequence because it might incentivize people to not do useful work that they otherwise would do, at least it doesn't force them to not do useful work.
Because it is their money. If you can't agree that it is their money, then there's no point in continuing. That is so fundamental to economics, and to my lived experience, that if we can't agree on that, then we may as well converse in ancient Greek (which I can't read or write, by the way).
And people do shop around when it is their money they're spending. I've seen it with my own eyes in those circumstances that you claim would never happen. I've seen a rich investment banker and his wife decide on saving $17,000 by staying in network for the wife's ovarian cyst surgery rather than going to the premier doctor in the area (who was out of network). Even though, it was an extremely difficult surgery, and the wife's fertility hung in the balance.
See, this is one of those obnoxious remarks you throw in from time to time. I don't believe you do think I don't understand. It would be completely incongruous for somebody (i.e. me) to understand the finer points of the tax code and of Obamacare, as I have demonstrated time and again, and yet not understand that in order to have an HSA, you need a so-called high deductible plan (which isn't even all that high a deductible). I've had one in the past, although I don't have one now, but I do have a lot of money in an HSA which I have yet to use.
Getting to the point, however, how does having an HSA enhance cost-sharing? It does the opposite. By allowing somebody to pay for what little cost-sharing they have with tax-free money rather than after-tax money, doesn't that mitigate the pain of paying with your own money? And of course the savvier people who have some financial means aren't even going to use their HSAs to pay for incidental expenses in the near-term. They'll let it grow tax-free just like you do with your IRA or 401(k).
By your definition, most health care is elective, non-necessary, luxury service. Even cancer care is elective. May be non-necessary (depending on the prognosis), and can be luxury (depending on the treatment). If I have 6 months to live, is it necessary to use an expensive drug to get an extra month? I don't think so. If it is not necessary, then isn't it a luxury? If there is a cheap drug that gets the job done but has some unpleasant side effects, is it necessary that I get the more expensive drug which doesn't have such side effects? If I need quadruple bypass surgery within the next 3 months, or I am likely to die, do I need to pay extra in order to have it done next week rather than next month?
When I broke my arm a few years ago, I had the choice of going with a less experienced doctor and having the surgery done right away versus waiting a week to get a more experienced doctor. I chose the less experienced doctor. I wasn't facing a difference in price, but time = money for me and for everybody else.
