"There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government. And that’s close to 40% of our national income."
---Milton Friedman, "Free To Choose"
How to Cure Health Care; By Milton Friedman
Readers Digest Version for liberal bloggers and White House and Congressional radical Socialists who claim Conservatives and Libertarians don't have a plan. We have one, you just don't like the idea that you wouldn't control it.
1. Repeal the tax exemption for employer provided medical care.
2. Terminate Medicare and Medicaid
3. Provide every American citizen with catastrophic insurance. Major medical with a high deductible.
4. Increase the use of tax free Medical Savings Accounts.
5. Deregulate insurance so that consumers can shop for a la carte coverage across State lines.*
*The plan above was the work of Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize in Economics winner. I know what you are thinking...he won a Nobel prize, so did algore, Barack Fitzgerald Obama, Paul "I plagiarized Keynes" Krugman, Yasser Arafat and Jimmy Carter. It means nothing.
The following is the editorial opinion of a jackass with a modem like me with a BA in Economics (that and 50 cents will buy me a NY Post). I'm not fit to shine Milton Friedmans' shoes but I just added this addendum and footnote to his ideas since he is "dead" physically. Although he is very much alive since he influenced so many people like me...
1. Employer provided healthcare is an unintended consequence of the WW2 era wage and price controls imposed by libs like FDR. You couldn't offer a talented person a higher salary so they offered healthcare coverage. It's a dinosaur.
2. I may be a libertarian free market disciple but I'm not blind to political realities. I realize that any public serpent who suggests doing away with Medicare in a town hall meeting would be sodomized by a cane and be clobbered in the head by a walker. Even Milton Friedman advocated that it be grandfathered for existing beneficiaries. If nothing is done, it will be broke anyway.
3. We would never have to hear..."people are going bankrupt because they don't have health insurance."
4. The only good idea to come out of Congress in years.
5. Why should a single healthy 24 year old man have to pay for coverage that includes OB/GYN and mammograms?