Health Care Common Sense

Arnold King, an economics professor at George Mason University has offered up some ideas for the Republicans to consider as conditions if they join President Obama in a discussion on health care. Here they are:

1. All Medicare savings must be used to shore up Medicare. None of those savings can be used to fund new insurance subsidies or entitlements. Medicare is unsustainable, and it is going to need every dollar that we can save, and more. There is nothing to spare for a new entitlement.

2. Medical savings accounts must not be killed.

3. Catastrophic health insurance must not be killed or heavily disadvantaged relative to comprehensive insurance.

4. All new subsidies that enable people to purchase health insurance must be on budget, rather than through insurance company regulations that are likely to result in cost-shifting.

5. The bill must provide for at least one of the following:
- Interstate competition in health insurance.
- greatly reduce (preferably eliminate) the tax inequity between obtaining health insurance on your own and getting it through your employer.

As far as I am concerned, any bill that fails to satisfy all five of those points deserves opposition.

Personally, I would not want to offer any new subsidies (item #4), believe we should ENCOURAGE medical savings accounts (item #2) - not just spare them, and would want to include both points in item #5.