Redstate

By David Adams Posted in State Politics — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

cross-posted on Bluegrass Policy Blog

While everyone is watching gas prices go up, health insurance reform is dying as a federal issue. Look at this article, which promotes a socialized medicine scheme as a viable bipartisan compromise.

"Under the Wyden-Bennett plan, people with an income of less than 400% of poverty would be eligible for subsidies, everyone would have access to guaranteed and community rated coverage, and the feds would oversee a system of private individual-based insurance and would collect the base-line premiums through the tax system.

In exchange for all of this consumer support, the Wyden-Bennett plan would also require individuals to have health insurance (an individual mandate) and that it must be purchased from a state-run purchasing pool that would require health policies have substantial benefits (rich benefit mandates) and offer a choice of private policies. There would be a flat personal tax deduction ($12,000 for a couple) for consumer insurance payments and low-income subsidies would be tied to the lowest cost policy available."

By the time this bill comes up in Congress, we will have even more data on the horrific mess Massachusetts has made with their similar plan. Emulating that kind of failure on a much larger scale will never get serious consideration.

The bottom line is Kentucky is going to have to improve its own health insurance market because Congress is too likely to stay stuck in its inaction. We are still too close to our 1994 experiment with guaranteed-issue nonsense to take another bite at the big-government health insurance apple any time soon. We need to look in the other direction for meaningful solutions.

If nearly everyone can agree more health insurers competing makes the market better for consumers, we need to consider loosening any regulations which might bring more companies back to the state. Here is one that would bring some companies back.