An Actual Good Idea for Healthcare Reform Seen on CNN

That's right, I didn't believe it either.  My wife and I were watching CNN this morning when my wife proclaimed "they are going to give their thoughts on the healthcare reform".  My knee-jerk reaction was "they are just going to support the Obamacare plan".  The reality was a pleasant surprise...

It was Sanjay Gupta's show an he was interviewing a Harvard business professor who was strangely reminiscent of Julia Childs.  Anyway she starts off with the standard talking point of how there are 50 million uninsured people in this country and how much of a moral shortcoming that is for all of us.  We notice how the figure changes from 30 million to 50 million to sometimes less than 20 million depending on who is making the statement but I digress...  She praises the administration for the desire to cover these people and I braced myself for the worst - and to my surprise she starts talking sense!

Her next point is that Medicare and Medicaid is running a $30 TRILLION dollar unfunded mandate that will fall on those of us working today and our children and grandchildren.  Basically we put a train on the tracks, tied ourselves to the rails, pointed it in our direction and started it up hoping our children and grandchildren will arrive in time and with enough wherewithal to save us.  She accurately points out how the political realities of this country include the fact that current politicians will use entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid to give unfunded benefits today to get votes today.  They do this by borrowing money since they also don't want to raise taxes to pay for the entitlements which would similarly cost them votes.  My solution to that problem - don't allow government to engage in entitlements and that applies to any expansion of Medicare, Medicaid or any other subsidizing of health insurance under any circumstances.

Then she offers the solution - "consumerize" health insurance.  What is that you ask?  It means instead of insurance companies catering to employers they would have to cater to us - the consumer!   She makes an accurate point by comparing Switzerland to the United States in the right way:  Switzerland has 48 insurance companies while the U.S. has 15.  Note that Switzerland is about the size of Massachusetts.

So some things to know:
1. The problem with the cost of health insurance is not complicated - there is no competition among health insurance companies.  15 health insurance companies for a country of 300 million shows that there are regulatory blocks to competition that we need to remove.  That is economics 101.  When health insurance companies compete you win!  This will make health insurance affordable for the majority of people and bring about real improvement in the system.

2. Government funded health insurance will destroy our economy.

Until the debate turns to this simple point we are all losing and with that $38 trillion Medicare "train" charging at us we cannot afford to ignore this. Don't let the politicians screw it up just because they think some healthcare reform is better than no healthcare reform and they need to get it done before their term runs out.   Real reform based on the above costs us nothing, is easy to do and brings about meaningful change.