*Makes sense to me!*
*My health-care plan**
*Posted: March 17, 2010
5:53 pm Eastern
Liberals keep complaining that Republicans don't have a plan for reforming
health care in America. I have a plan!
It's a one-page bill creating a free market in health insurance. Let's all
pause here for a moment so liberals can Google the term "free market."
Nearly every problem with health care in this country – apart from trial
lawyers and out-of-date magazines in doctors' waiting rooms – would be
solved by my plan.
In the first sentence, Congress will amend the McCarran-Ferguson Act to
allow interstate competition in health insurance.
We can't have a free market in health insurance until Congress eliminates
the antitrust exemption protecting health insurance companies from
competition. If Democrats really wanted to punish insurance companies, which
they manifestly do not, they'd make insurers compete.
The very next sentence of my bill provides that the exclusive regulator of
insurance companies will be the state where the company's home office is.
Every insurance company in the country would incorporate in the state with
the fewest government mandates, just as most corporations are based in
Delaware today.
That's the only way to bypass idiotic state mandates, requiring all
insurance plans offered in the state to cover, for example, the Zone Diet,
sex-change operations and whatever it is that poor Heidi Montag has done to
herself this week.
President Obama says we need national health care because Natoma Canfield of
Ohio had to drop her insurance when she couldn't afford the $6,700 premiums,
and now she's got cancer.
Much as I admire Obama's use of terminally ill human beings as political
props, let me point out here that perhaps Natoma could have afforded
insurance had she not been required by Ohio's state insurance mandates to
purchase a plan that covers infertility treatments and unlimited ob/gyn
visits, among other things.
It sounds like Natoma could have used a plan that covered only the basics –
you know, things like cancer.
The third sentence of my bill would prohibit the federal government from
regulating insurance companies, except for normal laws and regulations that
apply to all companies.
Freed from onerous state and federal mandates turning insurance companies
into public utilities, insurers would be allowed to offer a whole
smorgasbord of insurance plans, finally giving consumers a choice.
Instead of Harry Reid deciding whether your insurance plan covers Viagra,
this decision would be made by you, the consumer. (I apologize for using the
terms "Harry Reid" and "Viagra" in the same sentence. I promise that won't
happen again.)
Instead of insurance companies jumping to the tune of politicians bought by
health-care lobbyists, they would jump to tune of hundreds of millions of
Americans buying health insurance on the free market.
Hypochondriac liberals could still buy the aromatherapy plan, and normal
people would be able to buy plans that only cover things such as major
illness, accidents and disease. (Again – things like Natoma Canfield's
cancer.)
This would, in effect, transform medical insurance into ... a form of
insurance!
My bill will solve nearly every problem allegedly addressed by Obamacare –
and mine entails zero cost to the taxpayer. Indeed, a free market in health
insurance would produce major tax savings as layers of government
bureaucrats, unnecessary to medical service in America, get fired.
For example, in a free market, the government wouldn't need to prohibit
insurance companies from excluding "pre-existing conditions."
Of course, an insurance company has to be able to refuse new customers with
"pre-existing conditions." Otherwise, everyone would just wait to get sick
to buy insurance. It's the same reason you can't buy fire insurance on a
house that's already on fire.
That isn't an "insurance company"; it's what's known as a "Christian
charity."
What Democrats are insinuating when they denounce exclusions of
"pre-existing conditions" is an insurance company using the "pre-existing
condition" ruse to deny coverage to a current policy holder – someone who's
been paying into the plan, year after year.
Any insurance company operating in the free market that pulled that trick
wouldn't stay in business long.
If hotels were as heavily regulated as health insurance is, right now I'd be
explaining to you why the government doesn't need to mandate that hotels
offer rooms with beds. If they didn't, they'd go out of business.
I'm sure people who lived in the old Soviet Union thought it was crazy to
leave groceries to the free market. ("But what if they don't stock the food
we want?")
The market is a more powerful enforcement mechanism than indolent government
bureaucrats. If you don't believe me, ask Toyota about six months from now.
Right now, insurance companies are protected by government regulations from
having to honor their contracts. Violating contracts isn't so easy when
competitors are lurking, ready to steal your customers.
In addition to saving taxpayer money and providing better health insurance,
my plan also saves trees by being 2,199 pages shorter than the Democrats'
plan.
