September 5, 2009

We don't need radical change. Subsidies and high risk pools can get the job done.

When was the last time you asked your doctor how much it would cost for a necessary test or procedure? In all likelihood, you can't remember. That's because your employer-provided health plan or the government "paid for it." In fact, you paid. We all pay for health care.

There's no denying that our health-care system is complex. However, we can trace most of the problems in the current system to the lack of control individuals and families have over their care. If there's one lesson we've taken away from the thousands of citizens at town-hall meetings, it's that one massive health-care bill isn't the solution. Americans nationwide have voiced their desire for greater control over their care and for reform in digestible pieces.

Here's how the debate over health-care reform breaks down, and what we believe Congress can do to solve these crucial issues.

-Costs and Control. The health-care reform debate centers on how to lower the cost of care, and who should ultimately control health-care decisions. Under the current system, nobody is focused on controlling costs.

Roughly 60% of all health care in America is employer-provided. This third-party payment structure has divorced the consumer-the patient-from the real cost of services. It encourages excess spending, runaway lawsuits, defensive medicine (doctors ordering unnecessary tests and procedures out of fear of being sued), and huge malpractice premiums.

President Obama and Democrats in Congress say that a new federal health-care bureaucracy and a so-called public plan is the answer. They are wrong.

Government has caused the problems we face in health care. Our tax code incentivizes employer-provided health care, rewards health insurance companies by insulating them from accountability, and punishes those who lack employer-provided care.

Every night on television there are dozens of commercials from Geico, Progressive, Allstate and other companies offering us better auto insurance at lower costs. But there are virtually no commercials for health insurance. This is because the federal government protects health insurance companies from real competition. Insurers don't have to market to consumers. They only have to satisfy employers. In addition, a person living in New York, for example, is currently only permitted to purchase individual insurance in New York. Allowing competition across state lines would drive down cost tremendously.

We believe the solution to this problem is patient choice. What appears to be a free market in health care today is not. The health-care market is a stacked deck that favors insurance companies rather than patients...

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