Six ways to fix the health care proposals currently being debated in congress:

 

1. Open the health insurance exchange to everybody. Currently in the Democrat proposals, you are prohibited from purchasing your own insurance if your employer offers coverage. That's just stupid. It means most people will have absolutely no choice in which insurance plan they get (they MUST take their employer-offered plan, because remember, starting in 2013 it will be illegal to purchase individual coverage outside of the exchange, and at the same time there will be an individual mandate to have insurance). At least let people have the option to not take their employer-offered insurance if it's poor or doesn't give them access to the doctors they want, and purchase coverage on their own.

 

2. Tax employer-purchased and individual-purchased health insurance equally. There is no logical reason insurance purchased through your employer should be tax exempt while insurance purchased individually should be fully taxed. This only contributes to the current problem, where you either have coverage through your employer or can't afford to get coverage at all. The Dems won't do this, because they wrongly say that exempting taxes on individual insurance favors the rich (their standard response for all ideas that are originally suggested by Republicans), and they won't go the other way and tax employer-provided care because most of their union base has expensive "cadillac" packages. Their argument about extending the tax break to individuals favoring the rich doesn't hold water, especially once their plan is in place and everyone is required to have coverage. That means hoards of lower and middle income people who work for small businesses that don't offer coverage will be required to purchase individual plans, and those plans will not be tax-exempt. Honestly, they could go the other way and tax employer-provider coverage; I don't care as long as they're both treated equally.

 

3. The tax on employers who don't provide health care should go directly to their employees to purchase their own insurance, not to the government to redistribute to those same people. This doesn't have a chance of being introduced or passing the Democrat-controlled congress since it means less government revenue and control, but removing the middle man and directly benefitting millions of people only makes sense.

 

4. Give people with employer-offered coverage a chance to opt out. Allow people to not enroll in the coverage their employer offers, and instead receive either a voucher or cash in the amount that the employer would have spend on their health care, which they can turn around and use on the open market to purchase any plan they want. This would be the ultimate step in empowering individuals and creating a truly free, competitive market. It wouldn't cost employers anything because they'd be spending that money on health insurance for the employee anyway. I suspect insurance companies wouldn't like it because it would increase competition, but that's kind of the point.

 

5. Make the public option compete on a level playing field. Assuming it even exists, it should be like the post-office, self-sufficient and not subsidized by tax dollars. Then if service ends up being poor, it will shrivel up and go away on its own merits. And those who don't take the public option won't end up paying for both their own private insurace and the government plan. True, you need some sort of government subsidies for the poor, but you can do that by giving them a voucher to purchase their own insurance, not setting up a whole new bureaucracy.

 

6. Lawsuit and malpractice reform. The real cost of these lawsuits is not only the legal fees, settlements, and malpractice insurance, but also the unnecessary tests and procedures ordered for doctors to cover themselves. This would be huge in driving down costs, without sacrificing quality of care in the slightest. Too bad trial lawyers are big contributers to the Democrat party, which is the only reason this won't happen.