Irredeemable

Charles Krauthammer’s latest column cuts through all of the disinformation in the health care reform debate with laser accuracy:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ODFkNjliY2FkMGNmNDU5NmNlZjE3YmE4MjQzOTI1NmQ=

He highlights a few of the irrational regulations written into the Senate bill:

• You’ll find mandates with financial penalties — the amounts picked out of a hat.

• You’ll find insurance companies (who live and die by their actuarial skills) told exactly what weight to give risk factors, such as age. Currently, insurance premiums for 20-somethings are about one-sixth the premiums for 60-somethings. The House bill dictates the young shall now pay at minimum one-half; the Senate bill, one-third — numbers picked out of a hat.

• You’ll find sliding scales for health-insurance subsidies — percentages picked out of a hat — that will radically raise marginal income tax rates for middle-class recipients, among other crazy unintended consequences.

His conclusion:

• The bill is irredeemable. It should not only be defeated. It should be immolated, its ashes scattered over the Senate swimming pool.

He then submits three recommendations for improving the efficiency of our existing health care system:

• First, tort reform. This is money — the low-end estimate is about half a trillion per decade — wasted in two ways. Part is simply hemorrhaged into the legal system to benefit a few jackpot lawsuit winners and an army of extravagantly rich malpractice lawyers such as John Edwards.

• Second, even more simple and simplifying, abolish the prohibition against buying health insurance across state lines.

• Third, tax employer-provided health insurance. This is an accrued inefficiency of 65 years, an accident of World War II wage controls. It creates a $250 billion annual loss of federal revenues — the largest tax break for individuals in the entire federal budget.

These three suggestions would repeal or correct inefficiencies in our health care system that exists today due to government policies. The results of these three suggestions would be as follows:

Tort reform will eliminate or reduce the use of unnecessary medical procedures undertaken to avoid future malpractice claims.

Allowing the purchase of health insurance across state lines will open a competitive marketplace for health insurance policies.

Repeal of the corporate tax loophole that allows employee health insurance to be tax deductable to corporations and also tax free to individuals will place health insurance on the same footing as all other employee benefits. Over time individuals will decide to purchase their own health care insurance just as they purchase their own auto insurance or homeowners insurance. When individuals own their health care insurance they will not fear loss of coverage due to changing jobs.