First, my point #10 refers to (for example) allowing Aetna Healthcare of Delaware to merge with Aetna Healthcare of Connecticut and Aetna Healthcare of Utah and so on. Paperwork and overhead costs would be reduced.
Second, I think that you and I disagree about the likelihood that ObamaCare could actually be repealed without simultaneously providing a “replacement”.
Since I think that stand-alone “Repeal” is DOA, I want to focus on providing conditions that would encourage free-market entrepreneurs to provide a variety of health-care insurance plans, designed to appeal to many different types of consumers.
IMHO, if the cost of individual, “portable” healthcare plans is reduced by making their premiums tax-deductible, then employer-provided healthcare plans would become less attractive.
If keeping “...the wealthiest...” from getting the full benefit of such tax deductions is desired, then a “cap” to limit deductions is a simple solution.
Congress has said they are working on a simultaneous repeal and replace, including an ability to sell across state lines. If you are now proposing that your plan is to do the two simultaneously, you’re really agreeing with Congress.
And even if employer-provided plans were less appealing, you would have captured the market distortion from them in your own, more direct, government subsidies. That is the major point I think you are missing. How do you think college costs grew so quickly over the past 30 years?
What we most just need to do is to get the government distortions out of the market, such that, for example, people only purchase insurance for catastrophic coverage. But in practicality vested interests, including corporate and union lobbying of Congress, make that unlikely. Thus, Congress is doing the usual and replacing with an Obamacare-lite that will continue to make the market fail—just more slowly than the Democrat approach.
Yes, I know what you’re referring to, but that actually isn’t a big saver (most insurance companies are already pretty big at the state level) and it ignores the fundamental drivers destroying the market.
Making plans “tax deductible” does three bad things—it simply shifts the costs onto others, it provides an incentive for every last thing (as opposed to just catastrophic care) to be covered in a third-party system, and it encourages higher costs and overuse.