Superior health care embraces free-market principles — choice, responsibility, competition and financial incentives. Taking these principles into account, here are eleven excellent ideas for reforming health care.
- Leave in place the tax deduction companies receive for providing employees with health insurance
- Create a "Medi-Choice" tax rebate that will give individuals $2,200 and families $5,700 to spend on health insurance. (The rebate will make health insurance more affordable, especially for young people. It also will make health insurance portable, which will free people from being locked into jobs they hate because they are afraid of losing their health insurance.)
- Allow families to save money tax-free for a wide range of health expenses. (Tax-advantaged medical savings accounts can used for routine medical expenses. This contains costs by providing an incentive for judicious health care spending. People are in charge of their own money and keep the money they don't spend.)
- Create a national health-insurance market that would allow Americans to buy insurance across state lines. (With more options for consumers and more competition between insurance companies, prices would go down and services would improve — N.B. Isn't it insane that we CAN'T buy insurance across state lines?)
- Give those who purchase their own insurance a tax benefit similar to the one companies get for providing health benefits. (Why should these folks be at a disadvantage?)
- Step up efforts to detect and punish Medicare and Medicaid fraud, which costs an estimated $60 billion a year.
- Give Medicaid beneficiaries the flexibility to choose private coverage, rather than being locked into a government-run program.
- Pass medical liability reforms that will reduce costly junk lawsuits.
- Allow small businesses to team up to buy insurance at a group discount.
- Change current law so that employers and insurance companies can offer steeper discounts for good behavior. (One notable insurance plan rewards plan members $312 per year for not using tobacco, yet the annual cost of insuring a tobacco user is $1,400. They'd like to reward non-smokers more, but federal law stands in the way.)
- Don't move toward socialist or government-run models of health care delivery. (Before he become president, Obama said government-run health care with higher taxes is wrong. I agree. Government-run health care leads to lower quality, higher prices and shortages of health care services. For all practical purposes, Medicare and Medicaid amount to government-run health care, so don't expand Medicare and Medicaid.)
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I don't like sending people to DailyKos, but an annoying liberal tweeted me a link, and I really want to know what y'all think about this one. Tear it apart!
