How's this for fixing health care?

How to employ market reforms? Here are five simple steps.

* Make health insurance more like other types of insurance. Health savings accounts, which passed as part of the Medicare reforms of 2003, were an important first step, separating smaller expenses from high-deductible insurance, for catastrophic events. However, the legislation is overly rigid. Congress must expand and revise the structure of HSAs, and level the tax playing field for those not covered by an employer plan.
* Foster competition. American health care is the most regulated sector in the economy. The result? A health insurance policy for a 30-year old man costs four times more in New York than in neighboring Connecticut because of the multitude of regulations in the Empire State. Americans can shop out-of-state for a mortgage; they should be able to do so for health insurance. Likewise, many laws intended to promote fairness end up reducing competition and thus innovation. Congress should reconsider such laws, beginning with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA).
* Reform Medicaid, using welfare reform as the template. Medicaid spending is spiraling up, now consuming more dollars at the state level than K-12 education. Like the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children, part of the problem stems from the fact that the program is shared between both the federal and state government -- and is thus owned by neither. Congress should fund Medicaid with block grants to the states, and let them innovate.
* Revisit Medicare. Back in the late 1990s, a bipartisan commission approved a reasonable starting point for Medicare -- junking the price controls, and using the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan as a model. Elderly Americans would then have a choice among competing private plans. Given that the unfunded liability of Medicare is four times greater than that of social security, the time is right to experiment with this idea.
* Address prescription drug prices by pruning the size and scope of the FDA. It costs nearly a billion dollars for a prescription drug to reach the market, and roughly 40% of that is due to safety requirements. This is effectively a massive tax on pharmaceuticals. With new technology and focus, it would be possible to update the FDA, drawing from President George H. W. Bush's experiments with contracting out certain approval steps to private organizations, which boasted lower costs and faster approval times.

HSA's make healthcare much more affordable for the rich, and do absolutely nothing for the poor.

The basic notion of a HSA is that you should pay for most of your own medical care yourself, without any insurance. Really what they are is insurance plans with extremely high deductibles (often $10,000+).

The money you spend is then deductible on your taxes. This means that a rich person, paying a high marginal income tax rate, gets a 35%+ discount on medical care, while a poor person gets 10% or even nothing for a discount. So in effect, medical care is cheaper if you're richer.

What HSA advocates are really saying is that the problem with health care is that people have too much insurance. A very curious position to take.

Why do most HSA opponents know so little about what they're talking about....? Report It

so what regulations in new york make health insurance higher? and what lack of regulation in CT makes insurance companies happy to accept lower revenues?

If your sure this will work call your congress man.

Or we just acknowledge that Insurance is nothing more than a type of expense-sharing socialism, and abandon it altogether. The market will adjust the cost of healthcare and medication back down to a price that consumers can afford on their own, partly because doctors won't get screwed over with high malpractice insurance premiums.

I already pay about 17.5% of my annual take home income to a health insurance company for cr@ppy service and it doesn't include my $2,000 deductable, nor co-pays.

If you include the deductable and co-pays that percentage goes up to 23.5%.

I know that the 23.5% could be better spent and not on a middle man who is earning a salary of $2 to 5 million per year (CEO salary).

The solution is to remove profit from the equation. I am a libertarian, but if it means that the govt., has to manage the money, then so be it. The insurance companies are inept and corrupt.

Nexus: Include Fred Thompson in your rant, he used to be an ambulance chaser as well.

Also, malpractice insurance costs are a lot lower than people realize. My buddy is a physical therapist and his malpractice is only 3% of his total costs to do business. He pays almost 30% for private health insurance (since he is self-employed).

Sounds better than what we have.

The politicians and insurance companies would never go for it.

if you do not consider what the ambulance chasing lawyers have done to health care in this country..then what is the point in doing anything?

I heard GWB say something about Federally backed Malpractice Insurance for Doctors..

I'd Like to see the Gov't decide what a scumbag trial lawyer
gets for pretending he talked to a baby in the womb..that had to be aborted because of perscription snafu

***John Edwards..multi millionaire thief..of the back of your healthcare system***

My God your making it more complex than it needs to be, its already a mess. How about this? Create a two tier system, one that is run by the private insurance companies and deregulated. The second tier should be a coop where the average Joe can buy a membership for a low cost and this coop would be rolled together with the Veterans, medicaid , medicare, all of the others and if you want to deal with the insurance companies you can and if you want to be in the coop you can. If your in the coop you sign away your ability to sue and the medicine in the coop is bought on a grand scale and the theme is preventative medicine. keep it simple.