There has been much back and forth from the two major parties on the health care issue lately, and the information coming out from both parties is nothing more than more rhetoric, more regulation, more spending and less freedom for Americans.
Obviously, as a libertarian, I am opposed to any ideas that restrict the free market of health care and costs taxpayers more money.
There is no doubt that something needs to be done about the current state of the health care in our country, because it is expensive, restrictive and often inaccessible . I believe there should be six planks to any health care reform. This is not all-inclusive, as I am sure there are other good ideas as well, but this is a great starting point.
- Allow the same tax benefits for individuals that employers get for insurance coverage. Companies currently are allowed to deduct 100% of their health insurance costs from their tax burden. This would allow any individual, full-time employed, part-time employed or unemployed to go buy their own health insurance with the exact same tax benefits that their employer gets. This means that you would no longer have to hang onto a job you hate for fear of losing your great insurance by moving to another company. Your insurance would no longer be linked to your employer and would follow you regardless of your employment status.
- Allow insurance companies to compete across state lines. Can anyone say Free Market? Am I restricted to only buying a car, a digital camera or clothes from the state I live in? No. Then why should I have the same restrictions on my insurance? This would allow for a massive amount of competition which would decrease price and increase quality almost instantly.
- Repeal government regulations requiring certain coverages for all consumers. This would allow us to tailor our insurance plans to our individual needs, very similar to how our car insurance is done now. If I am a healthy single guy who is 20 years old, why should I have to purchase coverage for pregnancy or heart-related issues if I don’t want to? As I grow older, get married, or have kids, I could add the a la carte items that I want.
- Enact tort reform. President George W. Bush ran with this as a plank of his 2004 campaign. How quickly he ignored this after the election. In October of last year, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that tort reform could save $54 billion over 10 years!
- Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost. How many things do we buy without knowing how much it truly costs us? Not much. If you knew that the Tylenol they wanted to give you would be a $10 line item on your hospital bill, I bet you would tell your spouse to run to the local Walgreens to get a bottle instead.
- Allow insurance companies to lower your rates based on how much money you have saved them. My car insurance gives me a reduced rate if I haven’t had a wreck in the last 12 months, why shouldn’t our insurance company be able to lower my rate if I haven’t been to the doctor in the last 12 months? You should also be able to get a percentage back of any mis-billed items you find on your doctor or hospital bill.
I open the floor for comments.
