What our health care system needs is repair not a complete overhaul. We need to make the free market and competition a central part of reform. We do not need more government intervention and control. After all when has the government ever run anything as well as private industry? Can you name one instance? I did not think so.
We need to take a 4 step approach to reform
1. Tort reform. It is estimated that huge awards from legal suits and malpractice insurance add $700 billion to $1 trillion annually to the overall cost of medical care. This represents the entire cost of the proposed overhaul bills! Doctors are forced to practice defensive medicine to stay out of the court room. After all it is much easier to second guess decisions made in a time of crisis than it is to make them, and that is what is going on far too frequently. There should be penalties for negligent actions but those costs and the determination of negligence should be decided by a panel of medical professionals not the average lay person.
2. Increased competition among insurance companies. Why does Polsi/Reed, and apparently our current representative, fear true competition? A government run insurance company will not be competition for private sector companies. A government insurance company will result in a monopoly in time. Insurance companies should be allowed to compete across state lines. We do not need different policies for each state as now exists. There should be standardization of the policies offered on a national basis. By increasing the competition between the companies and reducing tort costs prices will come down.
3. If we must overhaul the entire system the only reasonable and fair way to pay for it is to tax insurance benefits. It is time that we recognize that health insurance benefits are income when provided either partially or in whole by the employer. People who work for large organizations and the government receive a huge amount of tax free income that the rest of the country does not. We should tax the benefit and make it 100% deductible for everyone in the country. This would put every taxpayer in the country on the same footing and allow everyone to participate in the cost of healthcare. Likewise everyone should be required to have insurance. By forcing the healthy to have insurance the risk is spread even further and costs are decreased. The only function government should have in health care is to levy a cost on those who do not voluntarily participate, either through a tax penalty or through reductions in subsidies received. These funds would be turned over to the insurance companies who participate in the pool discussed below. Also anyone who managed to slip through the cracks would have any tax refunds due them confiscated in an amount sufficient to cover their costs just as we currently do for student loans. This would apply to non US citizens as well. Non US citizens who utilize the health care system without owning insurance would be subject to having their assets seized and deportation.
4. There should be a nationwide pool, shared equally by all insurance companies, that insures the now chronically uninsured and those who do not voluntarily participate by purchasing insurance (funding is discussed above). Because this pool would be made up of healthy young people who chose not to purchase insurance as well as the currently uninsurable and because the pool is spread among all insurance companies the cost could be minimized.
This is not a complicated approach to reforming our healthcare system. The problem is that our politicos do not have the guts to put something like this in place. It would mean that everyone in the country would pay for coverage in one way or another. A minority of taxpayers who produce would no longer be supporting the majority (almost 50% of the people in this country do not pay any federal income tax). It would provide a way to reduce the unwise deficits now being run up and make it fair for everyone. Income taxes would not have to be increased across the board (you increase revenue in two ways; increase the tax rate, which usually reduces revenue, or increase the tax base (tax the insurance premiums paid by the employer). This would be a cost neutral measure for the government, and would actually increase revenues.
