I love Krauthammer. He’s a no nonsense clear thinker, and he tackled the health care problem in today’s Washington Post. His ideas begin simply, and leave infinite room for growth as needs be.
Krauthammer begins with simplicity. Rather than totally remaking 1/6 of our GDP, why not start by stripping away the most egregious excesses. Krauthammer boils that down to two things: tort reform, and employer based insurance coverage.
Tort reform amounts to a reformation of the legal system that supports what Krauthammer calls “casino malpractice suits.” You’ve heard the story of the guy who’s ingrown toe nail surgery gets infected, he has to miss a week of work, so John Edwards takes his case and sues for two million dollars in punitive damages (not an actual case). This addresses a major problem behind rising health insurance costs. Many doctors admit to practicing defensive medicine (which costs insurance companies and you and I more money) so as to avoid malpractice suits. Krauthammers suggestion to stop this problem:
Abolish the entire medical-malpractice system. Create a new social pool from which people injured in medical errors or accidents can draw. The adjudication would be done by medical experts, not lay juries giving away lottery prizes at the behest of the liquid-tongued John Edwardses who pocket a third of the proceeds. The pool would be funded by a relatively small tax on all health-insurance premiums. Socialize the risk; cut out the trial lawyers. Would that immunize doctors from carelessness or negligence? No. The penalty would be losing your medical license. [emphasis mine]
Krauthammers solution punishes the truly negligent, rather than all of us. The problem is that trial lawers are big Democratic supporters, so good luck getting Obama, Reid, Pelosi and the like to bite the hand that feeds them.
Krauthammer’s second solution is to break the tie between employment & insurance.
The health-care benefit exemption is the largest tax break in the entire U.S. budget, costing the government a quarter-trillion dollars annually. It hinders health-insurance security and portability as well as personal independence. If we additionally eliminated the prohibition on buying personal health insurance across state lines, that would inject new and powerful competition that would lower costs for everyone.
Insurance was linked to employment post-WWII, but that’s no longer necessary. The problem is that the exemption was promoted during the campaign by McCain, and Obama savaged it. There’s no way Obama could propose that without paying a potentially insurmountable political price.
Charles postulates that:
Just half that sum [from the tort reform legislation] could provide a $5,000 health insurance grant — $20,000 for a family of four — to the uninsured poor (U.S. citizens ineligible for other government health assistance).
It’ll never happen because it’s everything antithetical to the Democrats. It checks trial lawyers and it requires Obama advocating something he railed against. Although, by this time in his administration, he’s no stranger to changing positions, so why not this time? Probably not.
Read Charles Krauthammers entire post at the Washington Post here.
