- Latest Developments In The Fight To Stop A Govt Internet Takeover
- State of Illinois Launches Sunshine Portal (CFA Site »)
- China Buys Our Debt, We Give Them Renewable Energy Stimulus Jobs...Seems About Right
- ATR Urges Governor McDonnell to Sign Bill to Abolish State Run Tax Preparation
- Saving the Sea Turtles...But at What Cost? (PRA Site »)
- Craig Miller Signs Taxpayer Protection Pledge in FL-24
- Next Week is Sunshine Week! (CFA Site »)
- The Economics of #StimulusFail
- Missouri Unions and Andy Stern on the Same Page: Raise Taxes (AWF Site »)
- Obamacare, Free Trade, & Our Economic Prosperity
Friday, March 12, 2010
- Rusty Bowers Signs the Taxpayer Protection Pledge for AZ-01 Race
- Ask Your Virginia Legislator to Vote "NO" on Any Budget Containing Higher Taxes
-
ATR Supports H.R. 4781, the
"Keeping American Businesses
Competitive Act of 2010" - Stimulus Dollars Are Taking You for A Ride - On Greyhound Buses (CFA Site »)
- Ronald Reagan Legacy Project Urges Naming of California High School After Reagan
- Democrats Attempt to Subvert Congress in Hopes of Carbon Regulation
- Economic Issues Dominate at the Bloggers Briefing
- Pushback Against EPA’s Attempts to Regulate Carbon Emissions Grows
- Minnesota Gubernatorial Candidate Running on a Platform of Tax Hikes
Thursday, March 11, 2010
- Michigan Jobs Ain't What They Used To Be...Unless You Work For The Government
- ATR and CFA Support Earmark Moratorium
- CFA Supports Earmark Moratorium (CFA Site »)
- Voter Fraud in the Name of Tax Hikes
- Ballooning Deficits in Greece Foreshadowing Future for the U.S.? (ASA Site »)
- Green Jobs FAIL
- The Evergreen Tax and Fee Spree
- Pelosi: "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it" (CFA Site »)
- ATR Staffer Testifies Before U.S. House Energy & Commerce Select Committee
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
- The endemic rot in government run health care
- The Debt Panel's 800-lb. Gorilla: Why Andy Stern Stands Out
- The Left Agree: Obamacare Ushers In Their Radical Ideological Agenda
- We Ought Focus On Cutting Taxes & Spending, Not Deficits
- The Debt Panel's 800-lb. Gorilla (AWF Site »)
-
Does the Obamacare Investment Surtax
Apply to Capital Gains? - ATR Urges Opposition to Sen. Isakson Pension Bailout
- Taxpayers to Legislators: Clean Virginia Budget of Taxes
- ATR Supports the Georgia JOBS Act
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
- ATR Urges Utah Governor Herbert to Veto Tax Increase
- More on the VAT
- Public Sector Jobs
- How 550,000 jobs were destroyed by the minimum wage hike
- How Obamacare Will Hurt Poor Women & Children Most
- Federal Workers Make $11,000 More Than Private Sector Workers, and There’s More of Them (AWF Site »)
Monday, March 8, 2010
- Legislation Introduced to Put Ronald Reagan on the $50 Bill
- Pledge Signer Wins Illinois Republican Gubernatorial Primary
- "Net Neutrality" To Kill Jobs
- NY Supreme Court Votes to Evict Residents and Close Businesses (PRA Site »)
- California US Senate Candidates Square Off in First Debate
Friday, March 5, 2010
- ATR and CFA Support the Spending Limit Amendment
- Utah Representative Breaks Tax Pledge
- AWF Will Rate Vote on House Jobs Bill (AWF Site »)
- Energy Tax Hike Series: Use it or Lose it Tax
Thursday, March 4, 2010
- The reliability of spending "estimates"
- Utah State Senator Tries to Sweeten Tax Hike with Pork
- Obama Administration Makes Attempt to Seize Millions of Acres Across America (PRA Site »)
- More "Stimulus" Boondoggles - Social Engineering and Lobbying for Higher Taxes
- Energy Tax Hike Series: Raises Taxes on Tertiary Injectants
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
- Is This Reality or a Science Fiction Dystopia?
- Andy Stern Update: US Attorney Reviewing Case & Obama Appoints Stern to Debt Panel
- Texans: Do You Know Which Candidates Have Signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge?
- AWF Asks White House to Take Position on Andy Stern Investigation After Appointment to Debt Panel (AWF Site »)
- AWF Continues Andy Stern Investigation (AWF Site »)
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
- Energy Tax Hike Series: Superfund Tax Reinstated
Monday, March 1, 2010
- Rick Berg First Pledge Signer in North Dakota Congressional Race
Friday, February 26, 2010
Free Market Health Reform Bill
Has Yet to Show Its Face
From Ryan Ellis on Thursday, May 28, 2009 11:35 AM
This post originally appeared on RedState
There’s been a lot of talk about the “Republican/conservative alternative” to Obamacare. Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK), Richard Burr (R-NC), and Congressmen Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Devin Nunes (R-CA) introduced H.R. 2520, the “Patients Choice Act” last week. While the bill contains several free market ideas (an individual health tax credit, expanded HSAs, a type of Medicaid voucher, dialing back on Medicare, etc.), it also has some fatal flaws (a Massachusetts-light connector, a warmed over version of an individual mandate to purchase insurance, etc.). These fatal flaws have been supported by the Heritage Foundation and others, and many Republican Congressmen and Senators have bought into them, to their own detriment.
To repeat an analogy I’ve used several times this week to health care conservative leaders in Washington, it’s like starting every drive in a football game at the 50 yard line—the entire game will be played on one half of the field. The Patients Choice Act is a classic case of negotiating with oneself. In giving in halfway to Obamacare, it consigns the debate to the socialist side of the field.
To be clear, Americans for Tax Reform (where I serve as Tax Policy Director) has accepted the claims of the sponsors that this bill cuts taxes at least as much as it raises them. Pending a score or other good evidence that this is not true, there are no Taxpayer Protection Pledge issues to worry about. The Patients’ Choice Act is clearly better than what President Obama and Congressional Democrats have been proposing.
But is this the best we have? Is a half-good bill that probably doesn’t raise net taxes the best we can do? If so, we’re doomed to a future of Dr. Obama and Nurse Sebelius.
Fortunately, there is a better way. There is a conservative/libertarian/free market plan to fix the nation’s broken health care system, and to do it in a way that maximizes freedom, personal choice, and the doctor-patient relationship. No one’s experience of health insurance has to change unless they want it to. Do you want to be uninsured? Fine. Do you want first-dollar coverage? That’s ok, too. Do you (wisely, I think) prefer low premiums and a health savings account? That works, too.
I call this the “Yes-And Plan.” The Pain Caucus Republicans who are pushing the Patients’ Choice Act are making the same mistake as the Nixon Republican budget cutter/tax hikers of yore: pain loses at the polls. Instead, we need to put forward a bold, positive, and forward-thinking “Yes-And” plan in the tradition of Jack Kemp and Ronald Reagan.
Let’s start with the principles:
- Nothing—no insurance company, no government bureaucrat, nobody—should be getting between you and the doctor of your choice.
- Nobody—least of all a government bureaucrat—should be telling you what kind of health care to have, or even to have health insurance at all
- Tax increases—even those offset by tax cuts—are the other team’s game, not ours
- Where government programs exist, they should be devolved to the states or to the people
That’s a series of principles any sunny, cheery, optimistic policy warrior should be able to get behind. So how to implement them?
- Create “mega-HSAs” (the credit here belongs to Mike Cannon at Cato, who has converted me to his “large HSA” concept). To do this, increase the contribution limit to HSAs from $3000 to $10,000 for an individual, and from $5950 to $20,000 for a family. Anyone—an employer, an individual, etc.—can contribute tax-free to HSAs. HSAs could be coupled with any type of health insurance plan, or no plan at all (i.e., self-insurance). HSA dollars could be used to pay for premiums. Whatever isn’t spent in a given year would continue to grow and build for health care needs in the future.
- Create an advanceable and refundable tax credit for the purchase of health insurance premiums. The limit would be $6000 family, and $3000 single. This would not replace the employer exclusion for health insurance, or any other current tax break. Rather, it would simply be a new “yes-and” option alongside these tax systems.
- Block grant Medicaid, Medicare, S-CHIP, and Veterans Health to the states the same way the federal government block-granted welfare in the 1990s. Welfare rolls were cut in half, and these programs could use a little of that “laboratories of democracy” magic. If this is too big of a lift, just block granting Medicaid and S-CHIP would be fine. Medicare and Vets can make do with a generous voucher program for recipients to purchase their own care.
- Allow younger workers to save their Medicare FICA tax (about 3 percent of all wages and self-employment profits) in a Medicare Savings Account which would be invested much like the federal employee “Thrift Savings Program.” Upon attaining age 65, these monies would be used to purchase a Medicare annuity for the rest of their lives.
- Put a hard cap on what trial lawyers can sue for in medical malpractice cases. The insurance that doctors and hospitals have to pay is driving up the cost of care. The trial lawyers are rent-seeking locusts who feed off of the rest of us. They are a dead-weight cost to health care. Almost as important, they are a key element of the other team.
- Allow everyone—individuals, businesses, etc.—to purchase health insurance across state lines. Allow any groups to band together across state lines to purchase health insurance. These inter-state commerce enhancements are critical if we’re to get out from under the Lilliputian benefit mandates that have been imposed at the state level by the disease groups (sidebar—don’t ever give money to any disease group marathon or other fundraiser; you’re simply funding the Left)
- Convert the stimulus payments yet to happen into “high risk pool” funding at the state level. There’s always going to be a hardcore group of chronically-ill people who won’t be able to qualify for care on their own (even under this ultra-reformed system). They aren’t large—maybe one or two percent of the population at most—but a compassionate society must provide for them. The big-hearted, optimistic, Reagan/Kemp solution to this is high risk pools. The states basically set up money that protects the insurance companies against too many losses in such cases. It’s like reinsurance for the outlier patients. The alternative is top-down regulatory solutions like “guaranteed issue” (which requires that no one can ever be turned down for coverage, resulting in system-gaming).
This “Yes-And” plan is a positive, forward-looking, and optimistic vision of what health care would look like in a better America. With Republicans out of power, it’s their job to present this vision to the American people, not to engage in almost-as-bad technocratic tinkering.
Is this plan perfect? I’m sure it isn’t. There are lots of people who know more about health care than I do (though I’m no slouch). But the tone of this is where Congressional Republicans and free market activists need to be going. Bold colors, not pale pastels, are what is appropriate in this, our time.













Comments
Unfortunately for all of us, reconcilliation will ensure that whatever Health Care farce Obama and the Dems conjure up will be forced upon the American people, and it will be the middle-class taxpayer that will suffer the most, both economically and physically.
>> John, PA Thursday, May 28, 2009 12:00 PM
I wish that the dems would stop trying to push the health care reform so fast. We need more time to discuss and come up with better plans. More spending and socialism is the only solution they seem to offer and republicans conceding to this does not help either.
>> concerned Thursday, May 28, 2009 12:35 PM
Republicans labor under the illusion that the health care debate is about "finding solutions". It isn't: it's about redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor. Because they don't get it, Republicans, will end up abetting the structure of the future redistributive mechanism, as in Massachusetts. If Republicans only stand for a more efficient welfare state, they stand for nothing.
>> Eustace Thursday, May 28, 2009 2:12 PM
Don't believe everything the CATO says because they put their own employees on dangerous employer-based health insurance that the employee loses if they get too sick to work. How smart is that? A 30-year-old male can get portable HSA insurance in most of the states for $700 a year. The Republican tax credit is $2,300 so the government would pay for the HSA insurance and then deposit $1,600 in the tax free HSA. That's what I call affordable health care. Because the credit is the same for all singles, the younger you are the larger your HSA deposit. I enrolled America's first HSA in 1996 so you can trust me. Save premium, eliminate taxes, build wealth, at www.save101.com
>> Ron Greiner Friday, May 29, 2009 10:01 AM
As a long time cry in the wilderness; Our group is the only one that has proved that they can reduce the cost of medical care to Rural and Suburban America, To liston to the August Body of Washington describing the health care SYSTEM is repungent. There is NO health care sysem. Our Polynedic Wellness Centers are the solution but withour millions to spend on lobbyists (Our represenative and Sentors are the most) we cannot get the attention that is neededd to bring this TRUE SYSTEM into being. We have proved that health care can be reduced. See our website,www.polymedic.info for more information. Regards and thank you, Wm. R.Streed, President, Health Systems of America,Inc.
>> william Streed Friday, May 29, 2009 8:22 PM