Everyone is concentrating on Healthcare, non-Affordable Healthcare at that. Maybe we should first look closer at the health of insurance rather than healthcare insurance? To that end at least one person has dared to go there in this column.
The Only Obamacare Fix Is For Obama To Legalize Real Health Insurance
Paul Hsieh — Op/Ed | Forbes
11/17/2013 [a few excerpts]
The President has proposed a one-year “fix” to deal with the political fallout from his broken promise (or lie), “If you like your insurance plan, you will keep it.” Now it’s, “If you like your plan, you can keep it until after the 2014 mid-term elections. Maybe.” But the problems with ObamaCare go much deeper than cancelled insurance. As surprising as it sounds, most Americans never had real health insurance to begin with — and were not allowed to by law. And the only cure for our current health insurance mess is to legalize real health insurance.
What most people consider health “insurance” is actually genuine insurance combined with inefficient pre-paid medical care. Contrast that with standard car or homeowners insurance policies. Those plans protect us against unlikely but expensive events, such as a bad car accident or a house fire. But we don’t use car insurance to cover routine predictable expenses such as oil changes.
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Suppose someone today wished to buy an insurance plan that covered only serious illnesses and accidents (and otherwise pay for routine health expenses with his Health Savings Account.) For many people, that would be an excellent combination. Yet he would not allowed to by law. Because of legal mandates, insurers may not sell such plans, and individuals may not purchase them.
ObamaCare did not create these problems, but does double down on them. Hence, to fix those problems, we’ll not only need to repeal ObamaCare but also prior bad laws.
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In addition to specific policy proposals, we need a broader national conversation on the proper functions (and limits) of government. Hence, I was encouraged by this recent Chicago Tribune editorial editorial that observed:
Accept that government doesn’t know what’s best for everyone. That people can decide what coverage they need and can afford. A strong marketplace offers choices for every wallet. Obamacare’s rules curtail those choices.
Such discussion is a good step in the right direction. Instead of debating which new government entitlements to create, we should be vigorously debating which freedoms to restore.
The president’s proposed “fix” won’t work. The only lasting “fix” is freedom. Legalizing real health insurance would be a damned good place to start.
See entire column:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulhsieh/2013/11/17/the-only-obamacare-fix-is-for-obama-to-legalize-real-health-insurance/
What a novel concept, putting the health in insurance.
Right Ring 