Frogwatch wrote:
OK, I accept that this is mostly a political group with occasional
boating posts.
I had an idea I'd like to run past people on all sides.
One thing people dislike about Obamacare is that it compels people to
purchase a product. Here is a way around the problem.
Require people to contribute 10% of their income to a "pension
account". We can get away with this because we already do it with
SS. However, this account could be used at any time to pay for
current healthcare including health insurance. Contributions would be
tax free and payments for qualified healthcare taken from the growth
of the accounts (which you would control) would also be tax free.
This would encourage people to shop around for healthcare and to not
go to the emergency room for a cold. At the end of the year, they
could get back part of what htye put in if it was not taken up by
health care. This would allow each person to put in money when they
are young and in good health and then use the money when they are
older.
Poor people would get contributions from the govt to their account and
they could pay for whatever healthcare they wanted.


A better idea would be to get rid of our system of primary private
health care insurance entirely, and replace it with good, basic health
insurance for everyone, with payment for that based upon a sliding scale
based upon income. Such plans would cover just about everything with
some exceptions, such as a fully private hospital room, plastic surgery
for strictly cosmetic purposes, et cetera, and those could be covered to
some degree by separately purchased supplement health insurance. The
basic plans could be offered by private insurers, so long as everything
was closely and properly regulated.

Oh, those really backwards Swiss handle health insurance as I've described.

My Norwegian buddies have a more socialistic based health insurance
program which is far superior to our patchwork quilt here.

All our health insurance system here does is enrich insurance companies.
They add nothing of value to the health care system.