I want to run this by some people in the know because I've been thinking about health insurance reform for years and I would like feedback as to whether this idea is dumb or brilliant:
What if the government socialized health insurance for each person above, say, $10,000 spent? The first $10,000 will have to be covered by an insurance free market and/or employers, and for insurance companies to qualify for the state covering their insured above the $10,000 cutoff, they agree not to reject anyone seeking insurance based on pre-existing conditions.
The way I'm looking at it is this: single payer is too expensive for taxpayers because they are on the hook for every dollar of health insurance spent, and when there are no costs involved to the patient, there is nothing stopping them from overusing health care and clogging the system. It's like a buffet - if you don't raise the price or artificially limit portions, you eventually run out of food, have to cut quality or go bankrupt. Insurance deductibles are a healthy deterrent to out of control costs.
On the other hand, I'm a total free market guy usually but I recognize the incentives and realities in health care make a pure free market solution either utopian or dystopian depending on your means. As long as hospitals take all-comers in their emergency rooms, health care was always socialized even in a "free market".
Obamacare was a compromise in all the wrong ways - increasing costs for everyone and taxing those who can't afford insurance but don't qualify for subsidized plans. The moral hazards of risking losing benefits if you earn too much money (thus disincentivizing earning more money or incentivizing tax fraud/working off-book, etc.) is a lesson from the war on Poverty the Left continues to ignore, but compounding it by taxing those who can't afford the "market solution" makes this moral hazard worse.
So, my plan was to replace Obamacare with essentially very high deductible socialized health care (preventing the "overeating" costs to taxpayers, while covering serious illnesses and injuries that aren't necessarily annual for most people), and the cost of insurance covering the gap will be relatively low with insurance companies risk mitigated by the cutoff. Worst case scenario, you don't buy insurance and end up hospitalized, your personal costs are capped at $10,000 per 12-month period, a high cost but not necessarily automatic bankruptcy for most people like in a free market scenario.
$10k is just a number, it could be lower or higher -- but isn't this the right direction to essentially make the best of a lot of bad realities? I think the free market is good for keeping costs low and quality high, but I don't want people with pre-existing conditions or serious illnesses to go bankrupt or end up dying due to lack of coverage.
Sorry for the long post, but I've been thinking this through a long time and thought it sounds like a reasonable compromise. But maybe I'm missing something?
What if the government socialized health insurance for each person above, say, $10,000 spent? The first $10,000 will have to be covered by an insurance free market and/or employers, and for insurance companies to qualify for the state covering their insured above the $10,000 cutoff, they agree not to reject anyone seeking insurance based on pre-existing conditions.
The way I'm looking at it is this: single payer is too expensive for taxpayers because they are on the hook for every dollar of health insurance spent, and when there are no costs involved to the patient, there is nothing stopping them from overusing health care and clogging the system. It's like a buffet - if you don't raise the price or artificially limit portions, you eventually run out of food, have to cut quality or go bankrupt. Insurance deductibles are a healthy deterrent to out of control costs.
On the other hand, I'm a total free market guy usually but I recognize the incentives and realities in health care make a pure free market solution either utopian or dystopian depending on your means. As long as hospitals take all-comers in their emergency rooms, health care was always socialized even in a "free market".
Obamacare was a compromise in all the wrong ways - increasing costs for everyone and taxing those who can't afford insurance but don't qualify for subsidized plans. The moral hazards of risking losing benefits if you earn too much money (thus disincentivizing earning more money or incentivizing tax fraud/working off-book, etc.) is a lesson from the war on Poverty the Left continues to ignore, but compounding it by taxing those who can't afford the "market solution" makes this moral hazard worse.
So, my plan was to replace Obamacare with essentially very high deductible socialized health care (preventing the "overeating" costs to taxpayers, while covering serious illnesses and injuries that aren't necessarily annual for most people), and the cost of insurance covering the gap will be relatively low with insurance companies risk mitigated by the cutoff. Worst case scenario, you don't buy insurance and end up hospitalized, your personal costs are capped at $10,000 per 12-month period, a high cost but not necessarily automatic bankruptcy for most people like in a free market scenario.
$10k is just a number, it could be lower or higher -- but isn't this the right direction to essentially make the best of a lot of bad realities? I think the free market is good for keeping costs low and quality high, but I don't want people with pre-existing conditions or serious illnesses to go bankrupt or end up dying due to lack of coverage.
Sorry for the long post, but I've been thinking this through a long time and thought it sounds like a reasonable compromise. But maybe I'm missing something?
