This tidbit from the Mahablog:
I have discovered a proposal for “fixing” health care on the Cato Institute website that is an absolute hoot.When the boat springs a leak, be sure to drill a hole in the bottom to let the water out.
The plan (see PDF) is to eliminate employee health benefit insurance and all government health care support, and throw everyone into the private insurance market. Insurance companies would be allowed to risk-rate premiums, so that as people got older and/or sicker their premiums would go up.
However, Cato says, this doesn’t have to be a problem. The solution is ... wait for it ... insurance insurance. They call it “health status insurance,” but essentially it’s insurance insurance. It’s a separate policy you take that will insure you against catastrophic increases in your health insurance.
I’m not kidding. That’s the brilliant plan.
This is from Cato's Exec Summary:
None of us has health insurance, really. If you develop a long-term condition such as heart disease or cancer, and if you then lose your job or are divorced, you can lose your health insurance. You now have a preexisting condition, and insurance will be enormously expensive—if it’s available at all.I am reminded of Curly in the bathtub, caged by his own plumbing repair, from "A-Plumbing We Will Go."
Free markets can solve this problem, and provide life-long, portable health security, while enhancing consumer choice and competition. “Heath-status insurance” is the key. If you are diagnosed with a long-term, expensive condition, a health-status insurance policy will give you the resources to pay higher medical insurance premiums. Health-status insurance covers the risk of premium reclassification, just as medical insurance covers the risk of medical expenses. With health-status insurance, you can always obtain medical insurance, no matter how sick you get, with no change in out-of-pocket costs.
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