Dec 10 2009
Congress Trips Obvious Solution For Optimal Health Care Reform
While Harry Reid keeps trying to put lipstick on the pig of a bill in the Senate, he and his cohorts accidentally tripped over a very smart solution to the problems of Health Care and the economy – and the fools don’t even know they did!
One of the largest burdens on small business is health care (taxes are next). It is expensive as all get out, and it crowds out investment, business development and hiring. One idea apparently rolling around the hall of Congress is allow the uninsured access to the same private insurance plans Congress has access to.
Typical DC near miss. They almost had it.
What should be allowed is for small businesses, the self employed and the uninsured to join the federal employee health care plans. I would be grateful to buy into the federal options with their great rates. It would lower my cost, provide our workers the best plans around and free up our energies and resources to grow.
I would expect most small businesses and self employed people to jump at the opportunity. The Feds provide a full suite of choices in every state of the Union. It would result in many more people covered, it is not government run insurance but a government coordinated suite of private insurance plans, and it helps free up companies to grow. Pretty cool, eh?
I can envision that once a company hits a certain steady state size (e.g., 3 years at 100+ employees) they would have to get off the federal plans an buy their own coverage. This would be even better because the federal insurance plans helps small companies get to a reasonable and stable size while giving their employees the safety of federal health care policies. The Feds are helping to incubate innovation and small businesses – the engines of free market economies.
Why 500 people in Congress can’t figure this out is beyond me.
“Why 500 people in Congress can’t figure this out is beyond me”
They don’t want to, they want to take over the big pile of money that healthcare is and use it to socially restructure society! To dictate what you eat, who gets what procedure, and buy votes!
ie. Redistribute The Wealth!
Great idea AJ. Certainly could be managed quite affordably by the Small Business Administration (SBA). It would certainly fit their charter as it really is just a matter of qualifying them for the program. I guess the umemployed/uninsured would enter the same pool through either Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SCHiP, etc.
Be easy to do and not cost a lot.
The issue of pre-exisitng conditions does bother me as to ensure coverage regardless of provides no incentive for someone to buy insurance and that will put you right on the slippery slope of Federal Mandates.
Let me raise the obvious objection…
Federal employees pay a health insurance rate subsidized by the Federal government. How do we address that?
Not that I’m disagreeing. I’ve long maintained that if the object was to fix health care (as opposed to forcing people to pay bribes and gaining power over the tax peasants), the best route would be to put everybody on the Federal system.
The point being that the Federal system has real competition…and premiums high enough to encourage people to shop wisely.
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