

If You Took Top 5 Ideas from Left & Right Would You Have Workable Healthcare? - jboydyhacker
http://www.blindreason.org/2010/02/if-you-took-top-5-ideas-from-left-and.html

======
dantheman
Those ideas don't address the systematic problems.

This is a much more reasonable approach:

• Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and
individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits. Now employer
health insurance benefits are fully tax deductible, but individual health
insurance is not. This is unfair.

• Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing
across state lines. We should all have the legal right to purchase health
insurance from any insurance company in any state and we should be able use
that insurance wherever we live. Health insurance should be portable.

• Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover.
These mandates have increased the cost of health insurance by billions of
dollars. What is insured and what is not insured should be determined by
individual customer preferences and not through special-interest lobbying.

• Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay
insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These costs are
passed back to us through much higher prices for health care.

• Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care
treatments cost. How many people know the total cost of their last doctor's
visit and how that total breaks down? What other goods or services do we buy
without knowing how much they will cost us?

• Enact Medicare reform. We need to face up to the actuarial fact that
Medicare is heading towards bankruptcy and enact reforms that create greater
patient empowerment, choice and responsibility.

• Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a
voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no
insurance and aren't covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children's
Health Insurance Program.

From:
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020425140457434...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html)

~~~
SamAtt
The point of the article is whether a compromise of 5 ideas each could create
a passable bill. Because changes smaller than either side wants would still
make a huge difference.

The plan you outline above would be and in fact has been rejected by most of
the Democrats in congress.

------
gfunk911
The Republican ideas, especially #3, #4 and #5, don't appear to actually
represent the Republican consensus. If you showed me those bullets blind, I'd
guess they were Democratic or neutral.

~~~
SamAtt
I think that says more about your partisanship than it does about the plan.
Paul Ryan (who authored the plan) is the top Republican on the Senate Budget
Committee and was considered a front runner for the 2012 nomination until he
said he wouldn't run. He's about as mainstream Republican as you can get.

From his Wikipedia page (he's the only member of Congress in the Top 10):
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6990965/The-
most-influential-US-conservatives-20-1.html)

