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September 20, 2007The Competition Solution for Health CareMI senior fellow and practicing Canadian physician David Gratzer has an interesting and wide ranging interview in Front Page Magazine today where he discusses Sicko, Hillary's new health care plan, and why health care costs are coloring Americans' view of the economy (Answer: rising insurance premiums are biting into paychecks). Gratzer's plans for reform: Foster competition. American health care is the most regulated sector in the economy. The result? A health insurance policy for a 30-year-old man costs four times more in New York than in neighboring Connecticut because of the multitude of regulations in the Empire State. Americans can shop out-of-state for a mortgage; they should be able to do so for health insurance. Reform Medicaid, using welfare reform as the template. Like the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Medicaid is expensive and not very good. Part of the problem stems from the fact that the program is shared between both the federal and state government — and is thus owned by neither. Congress should fund Medicaid with block grants to the states, and let them innovate. Revisit Medicare. Back in the late 1990s, a bipartisan commission approved a reasonable starting point for Medicare: junking the price controls and using the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan as a model giving elderly Americans a choice among competing private plans. The time is right to experiment with this idea. In a nutshell, Gratzer recommends making health care more like the rest of the economy, where vibrant competition and consumer choice spur innovation and help to contain costs. Full disclosure: he also includes a very kind reference to my recent op-ed in the New York Post. Posted by Paul Howard at September 20, 2007 10:29 AM CommentsPost a comment |
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