At Air 2 Air, what goes on in Washington quite often just mystifies us. The Health Care debate is no different. We are very concerned as to how the outcome will affect our ability to insure our employees. We are especially concerned that apparently our politicians believe that this Health Care Insurance Bill has to pass now, Now, NOW! However, it will not actually be implemented for four years??? Not only that, we need this all-encompassing system to save Medicare by stealing $500B from Medicare. Lets not even talk about the fact that you can go to jail for not paying your government mandated health care insurance. At least it will be cheaper because it covers 30 million additional people? Obviously I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer because I don’t get it.
Yes, I’m just a pilot, but if I was going to fix the health care system, this is what I would do:
1.) If you do not want to buy insurance, don’t. However, if you want to be irresponsible and not save for that unhealthy day, then, when and if you ever access the health care system and cannot pay or refuse to pay, two things happen. A.) Your wages are garnished to cover your being a health insurance social criminal. B.) You are forced to sign up for an insurance program and post a bond for any deductible.
2.) Individuals could forgo company plans if they so desired and deduct the insurance cost, thereby eliminating the health care tie to an employer. After all, that was just a Big Business corrupt plan to tie the worker to their company for life. When you leave a company you can keep the insurance you had at that company at the company price.
3.) Insurance could be sold across state lines. Yes, there are different state laws that effect insurance. So what. Stop protecting the insurance companies and the special interests in the State House.
4.) Once you are tagged with a “preexisting condition” you could choose to go into the preexisting condition health insurance lottery. The lottery would assign you an insurance company based on all the company’s relative presence in the market. If ABC Insurance Company has 20% of the market you would have a 20% chance of being assigned to ABC. Your cost? The weighted average healthy rate for your age +15%. You don’t like ABC? You can go back into the lottery at 10% step up in cost.
5.) Tax free and inheritable Health Savings Accounts which can only be used for health expenditures. Any funds left in your HSA when you die is injected into your heir’s HSA accounts.
6.) All health care expenditures require a 5%, before tax, user payment so the patients actually care what their money is being spent on.
7.) Lastly, actual health system performance statistics are collected and published by doctor and facility.
There you go! Everyone is covered. It’s all paid for. Insurers can run their demographic tables to spread the cost and risk. Individuals become the payers and are motivated to spend carefully. More importantly, it is still a free enterprise system except for a little Government dabbling in garnishing wages, running the Health Insurance Lottery, and publishing statistics.
