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Actually, there is a simple way to fix the problem: pull the rug out from under the third-party payer system.

This can be done by eliminating corporate taxes. If there are no more corporate taxes, there is not TAX BENEFIT to providing health insurance. It should be simultaneously eliminated along with corporate welfare.

According to the CATO institute, revenues from corporate taxes and corporate welfare payouts are almost the exact same amount, effectively redistributing wealth within the business community. If both programs are eliminated, this shift would be cost-free. And as a bonus, continuation of corporate welfare would be hard to defend for many democrats, which would help its passage.

Therefore, I believe one of the first acts of a second Bush Administration should be to end the redistribution of corporate income. This would start the slow death of the third-party payer system and begin the birth of a true consumer-based system with catastrophic health coverage... and their accompanying Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs). This would all make sense politically for the GOP as well: demand for full-blown MSAs would skyrocket, and the GOP would be happy to give them to voters. Of course, this would do little to fix the Medicare/Medicaid fiasco, but that can wait for President Bill Owens in 2008!

I like the way you think and wish what you and Cato propose would come to fruition.

I'm not sure either of the main political parties are willing to give up socialism, though, since they derive such power from it. But who knows, I'm sure the right people could make it happen.