Here’s a Crazy Idea: How about Increasing Health Insurance Competition
For the past 3 Presidential terms, the cost of health care has been a major political issue (and rightly so). For Hillary Rodham Clinton (and her husband) the answer was a failed attempt at creating a massive governmental health care infrastructure. (Been there, didn’t do that). Hillary likes the Canadian system of health care which must give great comfort to the millions of Democrats who swore they’d move to Canada if Bush was re-elected.
Bush is pushing HSA’s, which are a small yet positive step in tackling some of the root causes of medical cost increases. The Wall Street Journal recently posted an article by Dr. David Gratzer proposing changing the law to allow interstate sales of health insurance. This is an idea that has a strong economic foundation. HSA’s are good because they attack costs by putting consumers in a better position to make decisions about their health care spending. For the large number of self-employed in this country it is a no-brainer.
Allowing interstate competition attacks spiraling health costs by significantly increasing the number of providers from which individuals and companies can shop from. Some states mandate that insurers sell to any applicant (guaranteed issue) and at the same price regardless of age or health. Because insurance companies have to factor in higher priced individuals into their “flat” price, premiums are high for everyone. This leads to young, healthy consumers to opt out leaving an insurance pool of older, sicker people–and to even higher premiums.
The only way to encourage people back into the system is to offer lower premiums and the best way to do that is to open the markets up to competition. This is exactly what we tell the rest of the world to do with their markets. Why can’t we do this very thing in ours? Mr. Bush, we challenge you to knock down the wall that allows states bureaucracies to stymie competition.
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