Fox News host Tucker Carlson asserted on Tuesday that a black market system where Americans pay cash for health care services would be "far more efficient" than insurance.
On Wednesday, the Treasury Department announced that it was delaying a mandate that businesses with more than 50 employees provide health insurance until after the 2014 midterm elections because of the "complexity of the requirements" in the Affordable Care Act.
Carlson reacted to the decision by insisting that the individual mandate in Obamacare should also be delayed.
"For people who just want to be covered against catastrophic illness and don't want to pay for other people's hair transplants or sex changes, they're out of luck," he said while guest hosting Sean Hannity's Fox News show. "I keep hearing Democrats saying, the implementation of Obamacare at the end of the year is going to be a disaster -- I can't even use the profanities -- a disaster."
"This is the easiest way to bring back a cash economy into health care," the National Review's John Fund agreed. "Because a lot of people will drop insurance, a lot of people will be thrown off insurance by their employers. I think you're going to see a black market develop, where people will go to the doc and say, 'Look, right up front, I'm only paying cash so let's negotiate.'"
"Which would be a far more efficient system, by the way," Carlson declared.
"This actually might create a black market," Fund pointed out. "Unfortunately, that's not the way we should solve the problem."
"I think, in the end, this law will collapse under the weight of its on ludicrousness," Carlson opined. "What the Republican Congress has been unable to do -- repeal it -- maybe won't be necessary."
(h/t: Media Matters)
