When it comes to healthcare, one thing we can all agree upon is that we can do much better…
Like many Americans, I watched the heart-wrenching account given by Jimmy Kimmel where he described his newborn son’s complications. I am glad his son got the treatment he needed; I remember my daughter being in the hospital, and I was tearfully grateful that my daughter could receive the best care in the world even though we faced significant hurdles. Kimmel is right that nobody plans for disasters like this to happen, and there should be laws to help people like his son get quality treatment. But too many policymakers advocate based on their noble intentions and not the disastrous effects of their policies.
Obamacare has been so disastrous it almost doesn’t need an explanation. Over five million people (including me and my daughter) have lost their insurance, and the website remains a punch line. The new insurance offered by the exchanges has more expensive premiums, higher deductibles, and smaller provider networks. Many people in the country are now protected by only one insurer, with more having zero options, and the exchanges have entered a death spiral due to the lack of young and healthy consumers.
Yet opposing this disaster and trying to fix it, according the implications of Kimmel, means that you must hate little babies who need treatment. That is a disingenuous argument that tries to argue for policy based on intention instead of effect. We all want precious family members facing an unexpected illness to get the best care in the world.
As I waited for my daughter to wake up from surgery, I contemplated the humungous bill I expected to receive and thought of ways this could have been avoided. It didn’t include massive sets of rules—so many that senate staffers literally needed a wheel barrel to transport them—that now muck up the market and arrogant assumptions from central planners on what constitutes an eliminated “junk plan.”
But it did include many very simple things. I wish I could have taken a small part of each paycheck and deposited it into a health savings account. The government already does this involuntarily for my FICA taxes. This account could have grown faster than my paltry savings account through government help. They could do this by making it tax sheltered or allowing pre-tax contributions similar to those allowed by a 401k plan. Like most Americans, I dread doing my taxes, but a tax deduction for my insurance premiums becomes an excellent incentive similar to those offered for buying a house and paying back student loans.
With a few tweaks in the law, the same company that offers me car insurance nationally could offer health insurance at similarly competitive rates. Many doctors have to charge more because of the malpractice insurance they pay for. So tort (or lawsuit) reform would lower the cost of doctors’ malpractice insurance, which in turn lowers the cost of services they provide.
All of these items don’t require bills that are thousands of pages long, and they don’t represent a government takeover and resulting chaos in the private market. They don’t represent a very imperfect fix that barely passed the House. These simple measures would face far less risk of unplanned side effects. They would incentivize people to buy health insurance, help them become better consumers, and introduce market factors that would improve and lower the cost of care.
In short, passing these laws would actually constitute an affordable care act. Most importantly, these simple policies would better help people like the Kimmel family and my daughter gain access to vital medical coverage. So instead of defending a law based on how noble the premise is, I hope we can stop accusing opponents of the “Affordable” Care Act of wanting to throw grandma off a cliff and instead pass policies that actually advance us toward the noble ideal of coverage for all.
