A Healthcare Alternative

From CEI:

1. Modify tax policy to eliminate the disincentives for individual purchase of health insurance and health care.
2. Eliminate regulatory barriers that prevent small businesses from cooperatively pooling and self-insuring their health risks by liberalizing the rules that govern voluntary health-care purchasing cooperatives.
3. Eliminate laws that prevent interstate purchase of health insurance by individuals and businesses.
4. Eliminate rules that prevent individuals and group purchasers from tailoring health insurance plans to their needs, including federal and state benefit mandates and community rating requirements.
5. Eliminate artificial restrictions on the supply of health-care services and products, such as the overregulation of drugs and medical devices, as well as state and federal restrictions on who may provide medical services and how they must be delivered.
6. Improve the availability of provider and procedure-specific cost and quality data for use by individual health consumers.
7. Reform the jackpot malpractice liability system that delivers windfall punitive damage awards to small numbers of injured patients while it raises malpractice insurance costs for doctors and incentivizes the practice of defensive medicine.

Never happen. Makes too much sense.

18 thoughts on “A Healthcare Alternative”

  1. Well yea, this is akin to rearranging the chairs on the Titantic since we all now in the end the President and Pelosi are going to ram this country into an iceberg regardless.

  2. 3, 4 and 7 would have the primary effect of removing the ability of the states to experiment with different approaches and imposing whatever the federal government wanted to do, or the lowest common denominator in a different state, instead. For example, any state can cap non-economic damages today, and many do.

  3. Yeah, but what about the “pain & suffering” claims? That’s where the real jackpot is.

    As for pre-existing conditions, well… if you really want health insurance, the pre-exists will have to pay more. That may be unfair, but so is the fact that an 18-year-old boy has to pay two or three times the premium an 18-year-old girl will, just because boys 18-25 (IIRC) are two to three times more likely to have an accident. All actuaries do is measure the probabilities.

    Someone who is 40 pounds overweight, smokes, and drinks too much should pay more (all else being equal) than someone who is 10 pounds within optimum weight, doesn’t smoke, and drinks moderately, because they’re a greater risk.

  4. FTR, if I lost my current coverage I would fall under “pre-existing conditions” in trying to get new coverage — but the idea that I should somehow be able to get free health coverage, or heavily subsidized coverage, just because I have a sad, sad story…?

    It just makes me want to hurl.

  5. Someone who is 40 pounds overweight, smokes, and drinks too much should pay more (all else being equal) than someone who is 10 pounds within optimum weight, doesn’t smoke, and drinks moderately, because they’re a greater risk.

    So how about a person with Type 1 Diabetes? Or natural hyper-tension regardless of what they do about weight and exercise? Or depression? Or another mental illness? Or a cancer survivor? or…

    What is your alternative?

    Be like Mr McGehee and say it’s a sad story but nothing to do with you?

    Well, here’s the bad bit for you… you’re already forced to pay.

    but the idea that I should somehow be able to get free health coverage, or heavily subsidized coverage, just because I have a sad, sad story…?

    No, because your sick and need treatment because human beings don’t like to see other people suffer needlessly.

    And if that makes me some kind of bleeding heart pathetic excuse for a human in your eyes…

    Well. Guilty as charged.

  6. A bleeding heart pathetic excuse for a human who has no qualms about spending Other Peoples’ Money. I have no problem with you using your own wealth for your moral purposes. Just don’t use my wealth too.

  7. the idea that I should somehow be able to get free health coverage, or heavily subsidized coverage, just because I have a sad, sad story…?

    It just makes me want to hurl.

    You know, I cannot imagine that my dying thought would ever be indignity over not getting a free lunch. That mentality mystifies me.

  8. 3. Eliminate laws that prevent interstate purchase of health insurance by individuals and businesses.

    Another way to word this is “Prevent state governments from regulating health insurance sold in their states by out-of-state companies.”

  9. Another way to word this is “Prevent state governments from regulating health insurance sold in their states by out-of-state companies.”

    I’m a bit puzzled. Why should states be able to regulate the business that their citizens do out of state? Souldn’t that be squarely federal territory?

  10. I’m a bit puzzled. Why should states be able to regulate the business that their citizens do out of state? Souldn’t that be squarely federal territory?

    Shhhhh…

    You’ve just discovered on of the few legitimate uses of the Commerce Clause, and the statists don’t like it.

  11. You’ve just discovered on of the few legitimate uses of the Commerce Clause, and the statists don’t like it.

    Yes, the “commerce clause” is there to enable commerce. It’s not the “anti-commerce clause” or the “stfu and do as you’re told” clause…at least, that wasn’t the intent.

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