Wrinkles on the GOP's Health Care Solutions for the Brain and Brow
This expansion of Representative Boehner's remarks to the House of Representative are designed to illuminate the health care tyranny we were already subject to and inspire pathfinders and lovers of liberty to seek real reform. by Paul Benedict
(libertarian)
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Yes, it is important, very important, well before November, to outline a positive plan for health care that changes an angry nation into a nation drooling for specific, honestly conceived and openly debated change that EVERYONE can believe in. Here are four foundational bullets taken from Representative Boehner's address to the House on the eve of destruction. As usual, the Republican ideas are not nearly radical enough. They sound like pious platitudes mouthed, sadly, almost in jest, as crumbs for the satisfaction of the mob (that's us). They generally glitter, like shiny little pills or slick slogans: dithering words full of sound and fury but signifying nothing. Nevertheless, these echoes of real reform, seemingly uttered by Plato's man in the cave, flow from the form of things as they are, as they can be seen in the light of day and understood in the hearts of a people exercised in liberty. Here is a further articulation of the virtues behind these claims. The idea behind revising and extending Boehner's remarks is to stir our collective imaginations to grasp:
a. the true power of the free market and
b. the monopolistic, tyrannical hold the health care laws of the 1960's and 1970's were exerting on this nation even before the calamity of insanity that just recently was made reality.
Representative Boehner's points are in italicized type. My addendums and wrinkles are not. All rhetoric aside, in fairness, each of Boehner's points are abstracted from House Resolutions forwarded by all the Republicans in the House. Some of my "addendums" are touched on in the bills Boehner had precious little floor time to discuss (see Blunt's website). Nonetheless, reform must go much farther than the Republicans have, apparently, even dreamt in their most "radical" fits of fanaticism. Sons of liberty...? Well, they better get after it.
Number one: let families and businesses buy health insurance across state lines.
Addendum 1: Every variety of health care coverage must also be permitted. Perhaps committed "bachelors" are not interested in gynecological services. Contracts should exist for a variety of time periods. The typical one year time periods should not be the only contracts available.
Addendum 2: Furthermore, since, at least in California, crack cocaine will surely become legal, risk pools should involve participant reviews. The percentage of needle sharing drug addicts found in various career fields (such as education) ought to be factored into costs. Although no health insurance corporation should be allowed to mandate this, random drug and urine tests ought to be permitted in accordance with pricing reductions the market will bear.
Number two: allow individuals, small businesses, and trade associations to pool together and acquire health insurance at lower prices, the same way large corporations and labor unions do.
Addendum 1: Let church groups and denominations form risk pools across state lines, on a federal level. Studies show that those that pray, live longer, and that monogamous church goers live even longer. This is a sure way to avoid insurers that practice the outrages of refusing insurance to those with pre-existing conditions or dropping those who become ill with long term illnesses. Would you continue to attend your church if they practiced such abominations?
Addendum 2: Although McCain got Bush foot-in-mouth disease while trying to explain his logic on this, it wasn't bad: Corporations should be given tax write-offs equal to what they would have received for providing insurance to employees WHEN the employee accepts the employer's optional offer of a "health care savings account." The health care savings account would also be "tax free."
Number three: give states the tools to create their own innovative reforms that lower health care costs.
Addendum 1: At the state level let doctors form organizations, like law firms, but with additional powers. The additional powers will include the legal right to apprentice college students through scholarship/internship programs, binding indentures (as in ROTC and military programs) and the right to certify, without state of federal regulation, such indentured students to provide health care at various levels of supervision. This Health Provider Physician firm may have these rights ONLY IF they make a list of services provided with "generic" pricing [pricing without complications, including typical procedures] AND ONLY IF they issue "insurance" utilizing approved accounting and risk management software. This would be sort of an "all you can eat buffet" pricing mechanism. [Bye-bye middle men... Bye-bye federal bureaucracies.]
Additionally, this new insurance model would change the paradigm. Doctors would have an incentive to keep patients healthy and happy so they keep bringing their money to the firm. Yet, they would be motivated to do so with as few procedures as possible. Additionally, they would be motivated to serve as many patients as possible as quickly as possible. It might actually pay to miss a few rounds of golf.
Number four: end junk lawsuits that contribute to higher health care costs by increasing the number of tests and procedures that physicians sometimes order not because they think it's good medicine, but because they are afraid of being sued.
Addendum 1: At the state level, let doctors forming provider pools include arbitration language with limits on lawsuits. This contract language can be part of risk pool pricing. Federal governments may rate each kind of contract as a consumer service, but they may not legislate concerning the language except to demand that a variety of legal options are presented.
Ultimately, all of this must also apply to seniors. Recipients of Medicare ought to be given the option of where they may spend their allocation of their Medicare revenue. They should be able to convert their insurance dollars into health care vouchers.
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The views expressed
in this article are those of Paul Benedict only and
do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates.
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