A health care remedy

A piece by the head of Whole Foods on how to fix our health care problems......

• Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs).

• Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits.

• Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines.

• Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover.

• Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

• Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost.

• Enact Medicare reform.

• Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren't covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

Read the details here.....

Here's some things Gordon would add.

1) Driving without auto insurance is illegal, having no health insurance should be as well.

On your tax return, you should be required to list your health insurance policy on Schedule I. The amount of your insurance paid should be tax deductible. If you are not covered by some plan (private insurance, Medicaid, Medicare) you get racked with a tax to cover your insurance. That tax should be well in excess of what a normal insurance premium should be to encourage people to buy insurance.

Many of the uninsured are younger people who could afford to buy insurance but choose not to. Let's make them.

2) Make all insurance policies catastrophic care only with HSA's. Imagine how much auto insurance would cost if we insured oil changes and tire rotations. Do you think you'd end up paying more for your car or less?

Yet we insist on this coverage for health insurance. Why?

3) Before we turn over the rest of the health care system to Dr. Obama, how about showing some competence with the current systems the government runs; namely medicare and medicaid.

I read a piece by a liberal last week who talked about how "wildly popular" medicare is. Hellllooo. The reason it's so popular is that people get more out than they put in. The result is a plan with a 35 TRILLION dollar unfunded liability.

How about shoring that up before we go and put our foot on the accelator.

But this is how government works; we'll enact something that shows we're incompetent and then we'll have a good reason for expanding it.