John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods had a column in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal offering some common-sense suggestions for real health care/insurance reform that doesn’t involve a massive increase in the role of the state:
• Equalize the tax laws so that that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits. Now employer health insurance benefits are fully tax deductible, but individual health insurance is not. This is unfair.
• Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines. We should all have the legal right to purchase health insurance from any insurance company in any state and we should be able use that insurance wherever we live. Health insurance should be portable.
• Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover. These mandates have increased the cost of health insurance by billions of dollars. What is insured and what is not insured should be determined by individual customer preferences and not through special-interest lobbying.
• Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These costs are passed back to us through much higher prices for health care.
• Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost. How many people know the total cost of their last doctor’s visit and how that total breaks down? What other goods or services do we buy without knowing how much they will cost us?
• Enact Medicare reform. We need to face up to the actuarial fact that Medicare is heading towards bankruptcy and enact reforms that create greater patient empowerment, choice and responsibility.
• Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren’t covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Other than the “Enact Medicare reform” suggestion, which is about as helpful as suggestion that a patient suffering from a massive gun shot to the chest to “stop the bleeding”, most of Mackey’s suggestions make a lot more sense than the leviathan currently being considered by Congress.
Why aren’t Republicans talking about this stuff ?
H/T: Jason Pye
There is so much retorhic from both sides of this thing it is getting a bit crazy. I wish both sides would relax and really look at what is out there. We either come up with something or we are all sunk