Posted on 08/15/2011 8:12:03 AM PDT by MichCapCon
It’s January 2013. A new president is sworn into office and calls upon Congress to enact an emergency repeal of Obamacare. In both the House and Senate there is a strong consensus for repeal, but confusion regarding a replacement.
Although the previous administration’s “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” is widely recognized as a disaster, the status quo in America’s broken health care market is almost equally indefensible. Dozens of new federal health care “reform” schemes are circulating, but neither the public nor lawmakers have any confidence they won’t create more problems than they fix. What to do?
Thanks to the genius of America’s founding fathers, a solution is at hand: a multi-state health care compact. Indeed, by the summer of 2011 it had already been passed into law in four states, and was pending in 11 others. (In Michigan, the solution was first embodied as House Bill 4693, introduced by Rep. Tom McMillin, R-Rochester).
This health care compact shifts choices and resources from Washington to 50 state capitols. The measure turns over to states primary responsibility for regulation of all nonmilitary health care goods and services, plus health-related social welfare programs. Importantly, it also turns over the resources, converting each state’s federal Medicaid and Medicare spending into a few-strings-attached block grant.
How will 50 states exercise this new authority? That’s up to them. Once Congress approves the compact, a grand experiment will begin in these 50 laboratories of democracy. Some may botch it (Vermont is already moving toward a single-payer, government-run health care system like Britain or Canada), and residents there could pay a price in terms of lower employment and living standards.
Elsewhere, some states might replace both Medicare and Medicaid restrictions and price controls with a means-tested, voucher-like insurance subsidy similar to that proposed for Medicare back in 2011 by Rep. Paul Ryan. Economic competition between the states will create strong incentives to adopt successful innovations that are working elsewhere.
One thing won’t happen: With the same amount of federal Medicare and Medicaid money flowing in (plus increases for inflation and population growth), states will not abandon the health care “safety net” that currently exists for the poor and elderly: Americans won’t accept a “race to the bottom” that forces them to step over the ailing bodies of individuals who could be cured if only they could afford health care.
Instead, with the freedom to reform these programs in ways that best serve the needs of a particular state, the safety net will become stronger, with fewer inefficiencies and unintended negative consequences.
Congress’s work will only be half-done, however. The “original sin” responsible for America’s dysfunctional health care market is a federal tax code that allows businesses to deduct the cost of unlimited employee health insurance benefits, but refuses to let individuals deduct a nickel if they buy their own coverage. Solutions for that range from eliminating all the deductions, capping them, replacing them with means-tested subsidies in the form of individual tax credits, or simply giving individuals the same tax deductions as employers. Any of these would be superior to the current system.
Importantly, while central planners in the federal government are incapable of designing and operating a health care system that consumes 17 percent of the nation’s gross national product, Congress is eminently capable of reforming the tax code in a way that eliminates the skewed and perverse incentives created by its current provisions.
Government needs to get the hell out of the health care business entirely and let market forces drive the change.
What to do? GET THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF MEDICAL CARE 100%!!!
that would fix nearly everything that is wrong with it.
January of ‘13 is not too far away. But hopefully we won’t have to wait till a real president is elected. The 11th Court of Appeals has already Obamacare unconstitutional. More Courts - and even some States - need to follow through.
The writer makes it sound as if there will be panic at the thought of repealing Obamacare, due to ongoing problems in the health care system. What will replace Obamacare, yadda, yadda, yadda????
Why can’t we just repeal Obamacare, so as to restore the status quo which existed before that law? Then, work from there to make needed changes in our healthcare systems.
If I know my Democrats, in 2013, the new Democrat MINORITY in the Senate will use filibusters and other obstructions to stop voting on changing or getting rid of Obamacare.
The same Democrats who decried Republicans stopping the liberal agenda with parliamentary procedure will use those procedures to stop Republicans. You can count on that.
Make the first 10% of health care expenses come out of pocket up to 250 dollars for people on Medicare/caid up to 1500 annually.
We can’t have all you can eat plans, we can’t afford it.
Everything else should return to the way it was.
No research has shown actual statistical proof regarding preventive care and long term heath care expenses outside of women who are pregnant and children under the age of 12.
They should strip out all these programs and shore up the ones that work and try to gut some of the waste of of them at the same time with an eye for turning these over to the states or maybe even as a privately funded system by the insurance industry.
Oh, Come now! Opposing decent medicaal care for all? You don't like it because the angel who provided us with this, the greatest stroke of genius in social legislation in history, is black. That's just another example of The Rising Tide of Racism in America (Trademark)!
Oh, Come now! Opposing decent medical care for all? You don't like it because the angel who provided us with this, the greatest stroke of genius in social legislation in history, is black. That's just another example of The Rising Tide of Racism in America (Trademark)!
While we’re waiting for Congress to complete the process of repealling ObamaCare, our new President should offer simple check-the-box “waivers” to any State, company or individual who requests such a waiver.
Let’s strike those ObamaCare slave-collars off the necks of our healthy young people.
by Marc S. Micozzi M.D.
Today we are concerned about issues such as doctor-assisted suicide, abortion, the use of fetal tissue, genetic screening, birth control and sterilization, health-care rationing and the ethics of medical research on animals and humans. These subjects are major challenges in both ethics and economics at the end of the twentieth century. But at the beginning of the twentieth century the desire to create a more scientific medical practice and research had already raised the issues of euthanasia, eugenics, and medical experimentation on human subjects. In addition, the increasing involvement of the German government in medical care and funding medical research established the government-medical complex that the National Socialists later used to execute their extermination policies. ..."
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/national-health-care-medicine-in-germany-1918-1945/
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Nazi Party
The National Socialist German Workers' Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, abbreviated NSDAP), commonly known in English as the Nazi Party (from the German Nazi, abbreviated from the pronunciation of Nationalsozialist[5]), was a political party in Germany between 1919 and 1945. It was known as the German Workers' Party (DAP) prior to a change of name in 1920.
The current setup (Obamacare aside) is still pretty hinky. Just repealing Obamacare isn't enough because the healthcare industry already had its rent-seeking hooks well-set into the government: if we're going to restore market forces, we ought to eliminate the healthcare industry's regulatory captures and think about using the military (or at least military facilities) to train a huge number of doctors, nurses and PAs as competition for the existing medical Establishment.
Or if anyone can think of a private enterprise way to break the medical guild system, feel free to propose it.
I don't accept that premise. I think it's bogus.
You forgot the sarcasm tag.
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