The health care crisis became inevitable the day the government first got involved in medicine. There is no solution to the problem because we will never do the one thing we should do, get the government out of medicine.
Exactly how has the “free market” failed when gov spends 50% of the money on health care and regulates every aspect of it? Just wait til we get this free from obama and the dimorats.
Is there a bad idea for this country that Ted kennedy didn’t have his hands all over?
This nails it precisely. Give the consumer choice over EVERY PART of the health care process, and health care will become as cheap and innovative as computers.
there is not enough national market solutions for health insurance
because, there is not enough of an open national market for health insurance to operate in
because the largest body of health insurance reserves in the nation are not in an open market position, they are locked up in private plans of major corporations, unions and government at all levels
if all those reserves were free’d up into open market plans that all employed persons in the whole nation could select from, whether or not the selection was then subsidized by an employer, in full or in part
then premiums in those open market plans would be available at more reasonable rates, to small businesses and the self-employed, because they would be participating in the larger pools of risk, and reserves, that are now closed to them
two sets of things prevent this
1 - tax laws that favor employer, union and government plans - not a taxable compensation - while denying same income deduction for self-incurred health benefit costs to the self employed and others who buy coverage in open market plans
2 - state insurance regulations often have mandates that inhibit cross-state plans and try to dictate what a plan MUST offer
we can have better and more economical health insurance, nationally, if we unlock the reserves and the customers now locked up in corporate, union and government plans and require states to deregulate health insurance
corporate, union and government plans - their customers, and their reserves, proportionally - should be unbundled from the employers with each employee selecting the open market plan THEY want to be moved to - we would expect that initial ly employers would set the subsidy/compensation for the benefit at their current cost equivalent, allowing any excess to be paid into a health savings account
health insurance should have very little state regulation, with financial oversight moved principally to the same agencies as other financial institutions, like banks - where capital levels (reserves) are now stipulated against levels of liabilities (risk) but the products offered are largely set by the market
we don’t need national health insurance
we need an open national health insurance market - like we have for food, cars, computers, tvs, etc., etc., etc. and all workers unlocked from private or public segments closed to that open market
remember, you heard it here first
How can the supposed “free” market for health care fail/succeed if the most important component, the physician, is not “free” to collectively negotiate as a group?
In most large Fortune 200 companies, the insurance company isn’t really pulling the strings anyway. Most of the time, the employer is paying for ALL care and the insurance company is simply administering the claims and access. I even had one of the Blue Cross reps concede to me on the phone that “we have a manual on how to make decisions and it varies depending on which employer is paying for your plan.” Check your most recent EOB PDF or ERISA document to see if your healthcare plan is funded by your employer.