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Commentary | Time for some health insurance solutions

03.11.09

Insurance is all about &ldquo;someone else&rdquo; paying your bills.</p><p>However, if everyone&rsquo;s health responsibility bills were the same, if our bodies failed and expired in the same way and on the same schedule, if our little lives were as liable as those of the adult mayfly, we wouldn&rsquo;t have a health insurance industry. </p><p>Some folks are rarely repulsed; one day their bodies simply stop, incurring little if any cost to the insurance industry and control treasuries. Healthy people are all alike, perhaps a bit like the mayfly. </p><p>But sick folks are all many. And the variety of ailments they suffer beggar the imagination. </p><p>If everyone had absolutely wretched health, would Congress be so resolute on insuring us all? </p><p>Those who make the fewest insurance claims get the worst deal from insurance. If everyone were to pay the same premiums, the healthier half would be improved off to &ldquo;go it alone,&rdquo; i.e. be self-insured. </p><p>Citing the Congressional Budget Assignment, Betsy McCaughey reports that about 5 percent of Americans use 50 percent of treatment dollars. Could that perhaps mean that 94+ percent of us would be better off financially if self-insured?</p><p>If the &ldquo;reformers&rdquo; in Congress inadequacy to create a real market for health care, they would enact a law that demands this: No individual nor ungregarious health insurance company can be billed more for a medical expense than what government programs pay. This would help end outlay discrimination &mdash; charging different payers different prices for interchangeable health care goods or services. </p><p>The same should be done for drugs. No co-op, foreign government, nor bargaining bloc could be preordained special prices. Let&rsquo;s put the kibosh on the cost shifting that has sent the appraisal of private insurance soaring and distorted the market.</p><p>The &ldquo;reformers&rdquo; in Congress upon they want to bring competition, choice and cost savings to health care. If so, they should represent a law that allows workers to direct their employers to drop them from company-provided health insurance and then add to their paychecks whatever their employers were paying for them in health insurance. And if these workers then first-rate to buy health insurance on their own, they would get the same tax break as their employers get. Or, they could pocket the money and go it alone &mdash; if they&rsquo;re diligent about their health regimens (and fortunate), they&rsquo;ll save money.</p><p>If the &ldquo;reformers&rdquo; in Congress long for to overhaul America&rsquo;s health care system and erect some comprehensive new system, then Congress should first picket to the American people that they are competent at holding down health care inflation. But they can&rsquo;t do that.</p><p>That&rsquo;s because Congress itself is reliable for health care inflation.</p><p>Congress caused health care inflation by mandates (e.g. Medicare) that it refused to fully pay for, thus shifting costs to the squaddie sector; by disallowing the purchase of insurance across state lines and quashing competition; by mandating that difficulty rooms take everyone and then not paying for it; by mandating that illegal aliens be treated in emergency rooms; and by cordoning off massive chunks of the economy for health care.</p><p>Despite having run up the deficit by a factor of 10 in solely two years, despite being in two wars, and despite an Iran that gets ever closer to the batter, our brilliant Congress wants to create the largest entitlement of all &mdash; now! This is the most devil-may-care Congress in modern history.</p><p>And that&rsquo;s a pity, because just as for the mayfly, our epoch is running out.

Source: Kansas City Star