“insurance” is the misnomer, the twist in the language to sell these programs to the public.

You are right, it is essentially a transfer, much of it being from one of our pockets into the other, with some of the juice filtered out for the benefit of those administering the programs.

Still, the public needs to be educated and convinced. A good many of those dems who swung trump’s way are far from the free market thinking you seem to be, and I am advocating.

So, what to do? Given trump has not made a clear case (nor have the GOP, really, other than emphasize the “Repeal!” part), and seemed to prominently indicate those folks would be “taken care of”?

Definitely would prefer a very open marketplace, but that won’t happen politically, right now. However, there are steps in that direction that can make a big impact, to pick up on your list…
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Almost wonder if government at all levels should extract themselves entirely from managing any aspect of the medical “insurance” market.

Might be a whole lot simpler and cheaper to eliminate all those programs and use that SAME money to issue a coupon to every citizen for a pre-defined catastrophic (basic, high deductible – i.e. no obamacare level of coverage) insurance from the provider of their choice (of course, they’d have to accept these coupons to be able to participate in the market).

And leave it to citizen how much more, if any, insurance they want to purchase above that, and insurance companies free to formulate their offerings as they please beyond that.

The US is third highest per capita public (government) expenditure on “healthcare” of western nations (OECD). See exhibit 2…
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2015/oct/us-health-care-from-a-global-perspective

That kind of money ought to buy a “fat” catastrophic insurance plan, whereas for other countries that amount is the entirety of public and private expenditure p.c., and then some.

Instead of a “fat” policy for everyone, maybe those excess funds (above a basic catastrophic policy) get used to fund poverty support to help those make some portion of their deductibles, rather than get spread out widely across the population (some of whom “don’t need the help”).
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Agree that there are plenty of barriers to a freer market.

Artificially restricted competition – e.g. we should be able to freely import the same drug formulations from other countries;
lower legislative barriers to entry to practice medicine, particularly for “routine” procedures;
ability to purchase insurance across state lines (national marketplace);
Automatic FDA approval for drugs approved by two of eight select western nations – we don’t have a monopoly on the smarts, nor the concern for citizen safety;
etc. (there are plenty of these types of things that could be done to simplify and open the market wider).

Not sure how we get transparency of pricing, if other barriers to open market remain, without legislation. Seems something along a “no-surprises” commitment to cost of medical services.

Tort reform to cap runaway juries / judiciaries, but how does one cleanly “draw the line”?

Replace with the coupon mentioned above / phase out favorable payroll tax treatment for employers – a major distortion of the market – to allow a larger pool for private individual insurance. Employers could still offer additional coverage, as part of their compensation package, but the value is subject to FICA withholding, no different than if employers offered a car allowance.
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Obviously, these all are market interventions of one sort or another, and not all are “fully baked” (as there are many nuanced issues within each to think about and address), but they are probably more “doable” politically than what is a preferred ideal market based solution, and greatly simplifies what we had pre-obamacare, and now have post.

(looking back – points seem a bit jumbled, but it gets the points across and gotta go)

As to “healthcare”, Obamacare and the so-called “American Health Care Act” have little to do with actual health care. The former has sneaky, nasty provisions like The Independent Payment Advisory Board, and the latter is a misnomer for a mandatory health insurance bill that tacitly accepts the Left’s notion that health care is a right to be bestowed on everyone, though it is a GOP bill.
Let us remember that Medicare also had little to do with actual care in its early years. It was simply a financial product. But it has become a regulatory monster to which all medical advances must be reported if they are to be “approved” for Medicare-determined reimbursement. Medicare sets the “allowable” fees, and pays 80% thereof. The new CPT codebook, an AMA product licensed to Medicare and designed and produced for that client, contains 50,000 service/procedure codes, and a simple error by a clerk in choosing the correct code can through repetition lead to financial disaster by denial of reimbursement for work previously done (no retainers! Lawyers are so lucky).

1. No one should be forced to join an insurance program against their will.
2. Patients should get a reasonably accurate price estimate, prior to receiving care.
3. Insurance should share the cost of disaster across the community, not force the community to pay for every minor bruise and scrape of those who are unwilling to provide for themselves.
4. The patient should always pay a graduated percentage of the cost.
5. Medical malpractice should provide restitution to the injured, but should not cause doctors to opperate under fear of punishment.
6. All medical insurance should have the same tax breaks, regardless of whether it is employer-provided.
7. The government should not artificially restrict competition which will lower prices and improve services.

The points above would make the system more affordable, but no system will give us all healthcare for free. Funding care for those who can’t afford it should be separated, so it’s role is clear and observable. It shouldn’t be hidden and twisted up the insurance system. It would be preferable to just write a check.

Presumably, an adaptive function with conservative changes will discover the optimal outcome, albeit while following a suboptimal but stable path. The limitation is of course chaos. The observation that accuracy is inversely proportional to time and space offsets, established by the limits of natural and enhanced human perception and causality.

So, we have liberalism which is divergent, progressivism which is monotonic, and conservatism which is [slowly] adaptive.

No, they can’t “move back temporarily to Medicaid and Medicare.” Many of those who can’t afford insurance do not qualify for either. Medicare is only for the elderly, except for a few very specific exceptions such as those with end-stage kidney disease. People who qualify for Medicare qualified for it before Obamacare, during Obamacare, and after Obamacare. It’s irrelevant to the current discussion.

The Medicaid expansion under Obamacare gave Medicaid to some people who hadn’t had it before, but by no means to all people who can’t afford to pay for their health insurance under the old system. It is also expensive, and federal subsidies to the states are due to end in 2020, and then the proverbial excrement will be hitting the fan. In addition, a lot of people have been given Medicaid in name only, because there are not enough providers who will accept the low payments it involves, so it’s hard to find a doctor who will take them. And you’re suggesting expanding the program? This would take some sort of magic wand.

In addition, you can say medical care is not a right, but that’s not what most people believe anymore. There is also a law requiring hospitals to treat regardless of ability to pay. Good luck repealing that one.

Looking at a dragon, one character says : “you know that story about a camel is a horse created by committee ?”

“Yep”

“Well, that thing is a CAMEL created by committee !!”