
Reforming American health care: Heading for the emergency room - mblakele
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13899647&source=hptextfeature
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mblakele
Chart 1 interests me. It suggests that, if the US could slash the non-out-of-
pocket expenses, there would be very little difference between US and Swiss
health-care spending. This suggests that removing the US tax deduction for
corporate health care plans would be a good hack.

Removing that tax deduction should cause corporations to reduce their
contributions to employee health care plans, increasing the proportion of out-
of-pocket expenses. We tend to be more careful with our own money, so I would
expect this to reduce waste and increase competition in health care.

The downside is that the increased out-of-pocket costs would be painful for
many employees. That seems unavoidable - someone does have to pay for the
health care. But the pain might be eased by a tax break that initially offset
most of the cost. That break would be phased out over a few years.

