Healthy Ideas
An interesting take on the healthcare debate. If the congressional GOP truly stands for the free market, why aren’t they endorsing a plan along the lines of the Wyden-Bennett bill, or the Fuchs-Emanuel plan?
In the simplest version, families would receive a voucher worth as much as their employer spends on their health insurance. They would then buy an insurance plan on an “exchange” where insurers would compete for their business. The government would regulate this exchange. Insurers would be required to offer basic benefits, and insurers that attracted a sicker group of patients would be subsidized by those that attracted a healthier group.
The immediate advantage would be that people could choose a plan that fit their own preferences, rather than having to accept a plan chosen by human resources. You would be able to carry your plan from one job to the next — or hold onto it if you found yourself unemployed. You would never have to switch doctors because your employer switched insurance plans.
The longer-term advantage would be that health insurance would become fully subject to the brutal and wonderful forces of the market. Insurers that offered better plans — plans that drew on places like the Mayo Clinic to offer good, lower-cost care — would win more customers.
“That’s the way the rest of the economy works,” says William Lewis, former director of the McKinsey Global Institute.
Instead we get invective about things no one is proposing, and proposals that are too tepid by half.
