Charles Krauthammer, brilliant mind, lawyer, medical doctor, and writer who knows how to cut through the crap, has a remedy. He recounts how President Reagan and Democratic Senator Bill Bradley reformed the tax code by stripping out inefficiencies, giving everyone a tax break while increasing the amount of money flowing into the US Treasury.
He contrasts that successful minimalist approach to the hellish freakshow Obama and the Dems are trying to foist upon us.
This is all quite mad. It creates a Rube Goldberg system that simply multiplies the current inefficiencies and arbitrariness, thus producing staggering deficits with less choice and lower-quality care. That's why the administration can't sell Obamacare.His solution? Tort Reform that includes abolishing the current jackpot lotto system, and Insurance Reform that decouples insurance and employment.
Defensive medicine, estimates the libertarian/conservative Pacific Research Institute, wastes more than $200 billion a year. Just half that sum could provide a $5,000 health insurance grant -- $20,000 for a family of four -- to the uninsured poor (U.S. citizens ineligible for other government health assistance).The sincere liberal will ask, What about sick people being dumped by their insurance company, catastrophic caps, family bankruptcy due to medical bills?
The health care benefit exemption is the largest tax break in the entire U.S. budget, costing the government a quarter-trillion dollars annually. It hinders health-insurance security and portability as well as personal independence. If we additionally eliminated the prohibition on buying personal health insurance across state lines, that would inject new and powerful competition that would lower costs for everyone.
These are all issues we must address. Krauthammer's rationalizing of the system would put us on a firm fiscal and regulatory footing, allowing us to address these problems without creating bureaucratic monsters and breaking the bank.
You can read his article here
4 comments:
TORT reform should be a given. Docs (well, those who aren't liberal) will tell you it's the single biggest monetary drag (aside from people stupidly going to the ER for a Band-Aid) on our current health care system. To reference Obugger's chiding a couple weeks back of doctors who order "unnecessary" tests, HELLO, McFly! Of course they're going to order as many tests as possible to rule out whatever COULD be wrong, so that if the patient dies or winds up with a debilitating condition, that doc isn't sued back to the stone age.
And I'm all for decoupling insurance from employment. I think it's the biggest impediment to getting reasonable raises at many companies. If you decouple and deregulate, you open open up the competition out of state and therefore drive down costs for both the insurer and the insured, while meanwhile your employer has a bigger pool of money to apply toward both profit and reward of deserving employees.
But I'm a capitalist and logical and therefore: I Am the Mob.
nice overview..ty! keep shoutin!..while we still have a modicum of freedom of speech!
Thanks, WHT! All of our little voices add up to a chorus of truth. I know we'll all keep going until they pry the keyboard from out cold, dead hands!
Dr. Dave: Of course, congress would never follow your (or Krauthammer's) advice because they gain no power by doing the simple things.
When the Republicans gain control again, and it will happen eventually, I hope they've learned their lesson: More Glenn Beck, less John McCain.
hi there again Silverfiddle..thanks for stoppin by at WHT..plz don't be a stranger~! (Angel) :)
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