The Cato Institute is out with a new Policy Analysis detailing free market reforms that can make a real difference in the delivery of health care in the United States:
In a new Cato study titled, “Yes, Mr. President, a Free Market Can Fix Health Care,” I take up the president’s challenge and explain that markets are indeed the only way to achieve those goals. I also explain how Congress can remove the impediments that currently prevent markets from doing so:
- Give Medicare enrollees a voucher (adjusted for their means and health risk) and let them purchase any health plan on the market,
- Reform the tax treatment of health care with “large” health savings accounts, which would give workers a $9.7 trillion tax cut (without increasing the deficit) and free them to purchase secure coverage that meets their needs,
- Free consumers and employers to purchase health insurance across state lines (i.e., licensed by other states), which could cover up to one third of the uninsured,
- Make state-issued clinician licenses portable, which would increase access to care and competition among health plans, and
- Block-grant Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, just as as Congress did with welfare.
Unlike the president’s health care proposals (which, as Victor Fuchs explains, would merely shift costs), these reforms would reduce costs, expand coverage, and improve health care quality – without new taxes, government subsidies, or deficit spending.
Would a free market be nirvana? Of course not. But fewer Americans would fall through the cracks than under the status quo or the government takeover advancing through Congress.
Here’s the report, read it for yourself:
Yes Mr. President, There Is A Free Market Solution To Health Care Reform
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