1) Make providing health insurance to US citizens a crime punishable by time in prison
2) Make purchasing health insurance by US citizens a crime punishable by time in prison
3) Everyone has to pay for all medical expenses in cash
4) If a person doesn't have the money now he can use a credit card, take out a loan, etc.
5) If all that fails then the US government must act as the loaner of last resort
6) The US government charges a reasonable amount of interest which the patient is expected to pay, but limited to some percentage of his income such as 10%
Everyone gets access to medical care. Prices are kept down through cost competition. No one goes broke or bankrupt because there is a limit to how much they have to pay.
The only way the government loses money is if the person dies before paying off the loan. But I'm sure that loss will be far less than all the money going down the rathole of insurance payments, inflated medical expenses, government bureaucracy, waste/fraud/abuse, etc.
It’s an interesting idea that provokes an interesting question: would the cost of payments for a loan for a major operation be less, in the end, than the current insurance premiums meant to pay for such things. If so, everyone paying for insurance now as a remedy: put into savings what you can now afford to pay for health insurance, and keep it in savings until some health issue arises. In the end it will still come in handy as you age and your health fails for natural reasons.
BRILLIANT!