How hard can this be?

Healthcare should be bought by individuals directly, not by companies. Individuals should receive the same tax brake as companies do if they pay for their own insurance and companies should give a substantial refund to employees that opt out of the health plan.

Once this market dynamic starts up, it will make the healthcare market much more transparent and more competitive. Individuals will have greater choice and be able to better match their needs with what they’re willing to pay. I work in the enterprise software industry and ask anyone here if enterprise software quality benefits from being purchased by corporate decision makes on behalf of its users (employees). It does not. Same with healthcare. I want Apple healthcare, not SAP healthcare.

The government must cover those who cannot afford healthcare. There is simply no way around this and what people sometimes forget is that a lot of people are already covered in some way and others receive care regardless. But the way it works today is way too costly. People who don’t have formal coverage wait too long to get treatment and incur much higher costs on both their own lives and society as a consequence.

There are two ways people can receive universal care:

  1. They choose a plan individually and get the costs funded by the government up to a certain cap.
  2. They have to get on a specific plan offered by providers but paid for by government.

I don’t care which one it is they both have pros and cons. In both cases, the important thing is that government and industry work together to set standards. The government (or someone), together with the healthcare industry must take some time to think about what basic healthcare is. This should include ideas on how to encourage preventative care, how to motivate people to take care of themselves despite financial distress.

I know this could be a bit too much government meddling but US considers itself a humane and compassionate society (I hope), it has a lot of social services in place already, so I refuse to believe that there is not public support for having government put some focus on this. Standards should be set, they should be published and everyone should be made aware of what basic healthcare is (and is not).

Over time this definition will evolve and that’s fine. As long as we say what we do and do what we say. We provide the basic healthcare we’ve defined. A big part of this is for government to get more firm with the industry. There are many ways healthcare can be made cheaper. The right incentives should be in place to get the industry to look at low-cost opportunities as well as more advanced and expensive drugs. This can all be done. It’s just a matter of will. It will make this country a better place to live, save money for all of us and set an example for the rest of the world. European style healthcare is not the solution. They have their own problems and by the way, there are big differences within Europe too.