I have a plan, it's simple.
All healthcare costs including insurance on any individual are deductible (like mortgage interest is) on a person's income (or family). 15% of the average of the last 3 years Adjusted Gross Income is the most you can ever pay for health care in a given year. It is a rolling average. When you need health care services you negotiate with providers. Shopping around will become practical once again. This means that a family of four who's family income on a single tax return is $100,000 will cap out at $15,000. If you are poor person who has no income or even negative income you will not pay a penny.
No one has to have insurance, but once you have spent your 10% you move to a no cost option. It's bare-bones medicaid for all. This service is paid for by a tax on all medical procedures and drugs. Currently we spend 4 Trillion dollars on health care. Taxing every dollar and using it to provide this service offers an incentive to keep costs down.
If you choose to upgrade your healthcare options there will be supplemental insurance programs available. Just like there is for Medicare currently. All insurance companies can sell this supplemental health insurance anywhere in open national competition. No state control. Think of Geico or Flo pushing cheaper health insurance programs. This will be a gap filling insurance with strong limits. This will not be deductible on your insurance nor contribute to your 15%.
No insurance company ever pays more than a $100,000 on any single insured person per year. Over that amount is covered by a catastrophic insurance plan which does not kick in until the first $100,000 of the supplemental has been spent. You gotta really be sick to get to that. This is a separate component of your health care cost. Fully deduct able and contributes to the 15% limit. IF you choose not to kick in for the catastrophic you revert to the bare-bones program. Catastrophic coverage will be very inexpensive and available from hundreds of companies across all state lines. There will be strong incentives to see to it everyone who can afford Catastrophic insurance will buy it. Not mandated, but strongly made practical.
The result of this is it is impossible for anyone to not be covered for basic health care with no limit. If you want Cadillac coverage, you pay for it. No one can ever go bankrupt thru unpaid healthcare bills. Healthcare costs are held in check since the first 15% of open market expenditures are by "Bid". "How much is my Colonoscopy gonna cost again? Can't you do a bit better on that, Holy Cross down the road does it for $500 less". Like lasix it will be advertised services at a price.
Since this is based on averaged AGI, low income people will never ever pay a nickel in insurance. They can still buy supplemental if they can afford it.. but never go bankrupt. And everyone is in. No pre-existing for bare bones. Purchased insurance will cost based on need. Drug costs are in on all of these plans.
My question is this, why can some rube in Northern IL come up with a plan and the smartest people in the world are so dense they cannot. By the way I also have a plan to deal with student load debt.
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