Health care plan that does not offend the Nature
Shawn Tully writes for Fortune
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- --This is the first installment in a series of health care columns by Fortune editor at large Shawn Tully.
Let's dream for a moment: Imagine that our nation could start with a clean slate and invent the best possible health care system to replace the current wobbly machine -- one that everybody agrees needs fixing.
Although I don't like the Fortune magazine in general (they seemed ... too naive on so many issues especially when it came to technology companies, such as Yahoo! and Facebook), I liked this installment, whose main point boils down to:
Most working Americans don't control the thousands of dollars spent each year on their coverage. Because of an outdated feature of the tax code, it's the employer that buys health care for its employees and pretty much dictates the benefits.
The solution sounds simple, and it is. To create a real market, we need to hand consumers the money companies now spend for them. Then, employees would own their policies and carry the coverage to the next job. Today, millions of workers cling to jobs just to preserve their health benefits.
...it's important to emphasize that the government has an important role to play in health care. For a free-market solution to work, the government must protect Americans with pre-existing conditions who couldn't afford coverage in a de-regulated market. Otherwise, the government's main job is to create the conditions for the market to provide the highest quality care and the best possible price.
ObamaCare is a crime against nature: it's essentially having the government decree that water shall now flow upward, or that the ratio of circumference of a circle to diameter is rational. Perhaps some will get away with crimes like this for a short time, but they will eventually collect their comeuppance.