[lolinder]

To be clear, I'm not talking about the cultural fear of the IRS, I'm specifically referring to the idea that patterning insurance after the IRS would solve most of the issues that OP brought up:

> - Have to deal with filing claims, which ultimately becomes an additional expense, since chances are you have to pay someone to do this for you.

> - Get your money later instead of now.

> - Have to keep meticulous notes in case you ever get audited by the insurance companies, who can refuse to issue payments if your notes don't meet their standards.

This description could be lifted up and dropped in to be describing my tax situation each year. Meanwhile, I've never interacted with the kind of nightmarish insurance companies that some people have, so I'm strictly comparing two relatively painful bureaucracies, not nightmare stories about either one.

[glenstein]

>I'm specifically referring to the idea that patterning insurance after the IRS

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see anyone who brought up the IRS as a model example except for you. It seems like people are just talking more generally about steamlined than the current status quo experience, and there are so many ways to steelman that which have nothing to do with analogies to the IRS.

To your credit you did note that you wanted people to take you up on your suggestion of using only bad examples, but I don't think your insistence on that front holds water because this is the type of thing where the difference that makes the difference is going to be the very details you are asking everyone to gloss over.

[lolinder]

I was responding to GP, who definitely did say they would love to use the IRS as a positive example:

> I would LOVE, absolutely LOVE, the ability to get my healthcare funded via an organization templated off the IRS.

I'm not at all sure what you're getting at with the rest of your comment, because it doesn't seem to relate to anything I actually said. I'm insistent that we be realistic about what a US bureaucracy will inevitably look like and not expect it to produce less red tape than is already present. I said nothing about glossing over anything.