Health Care

Repeal and start over with free market principles.

Obamacare should be repealed and Congress should start from scratch using free market principles.

We need health insurance reform that leaves decisions in the hands of doctors and patients, without government intervention. Competition and choice will bring down the cost of healthcare, not price controls and rationed care.

I would like to see any healthcare reform contain the following five policies:

-Individual ownership of insurance policies. By de-linking insurance from the employer, you would create portability for the individual, the tax benefit currently enjoyed by the employer would go to the individual, and the employer would be free to pay a large portion of the money saved in healthcare costs back to the employee in salary or other benefits.

-Expand the use of Medical Savings Accounts. Having the individual to pay directly for their healthcare from an MSA, you create incentives to seek the low cost provider and avoid unnecessary procedures and tests. It also allows younger people, who are generally healthier and need less medical care to build a “medical nest egg” tax free with the unused portion of the yearly contributions.

-Allow interstate purchasing of insurance. Each state has its own insurance regulations, meaning that a family of four in New Jersey can (and does) pay dramatically more than a family of four in Alabama. Allowing individuals to purchase insurance across state lines would increase competition and lower prices.

-Reduce the number of mandated benefits that insurers are required to cover. Let consumers price and choose their own benefits. This will bring the consumer closer to his own healthcare choices and costs and give lower income folks access to basic healthcare.

-Tort reform. The threat of litigation has caused medical malpractice insurance to skyrocket and given doctors incentives to practice “defensive medicine”; together this has unnecessarily added hundreds of millions of dollars to healthcare costs. While we clearly need to give recourse to patients who have been harmed by irresponsible doctors, we need to restore balance to the system so that doctors can afford to practice medicine and make decisions in the best interest of the patient, not to cover himself in case of a lawsuit.

Related Links:
Bad Medicine: A Guide to the Real Costs and Consquences of the New Health Care Law