The standard employer-based model for health insurance leaves a remarkable number of people out. The Show-Me Institute highlights the ways that a consumer-driven, market-based model for coverage can help more people get the care they need while taking ownership for their own health and lifestyle decisions.
Dave Roland, a policy analyst with the Show-Me Institute, testifies before the Senate Governmental Accountability and Fiscal Oversight Committee and the House Special Standing Committee on General Laws about SJR 25 and HJR 57, also known as the Health Care Freedom Act, which would offer citizens the opportunity to modify the Missouri Bill of Rights to formally recognize their right to decide for themselves whether they will participate in any private health care system. Under this amendment, the government would not be permitted to prevent citizens from offering or accepting direct payment for health care services, and neither could it substantially limit the purchase or sale of health insurance in private health care systems.
Missouri’s oral health is among the worst in the nation, partly because of the state’s shortage of dentists. Programs in Alaska, England, Australia, and Canada have had success with dental therapists, who can provide a wide range of dental services at a low cost. Missouri could also benefit from dental therapists if the state’s professional licensing law did not stand in the way.
The individual health insurance mandate being considered in Congress would violate individual liberties secured by the U.S. Constitution. A proposed amendment to the Missouri Constitution in response to the proposed mandate might be a useful step toward protecting individual freedoms.
Federal attention has recently focused on small businesses in an effort to reduce soaring unemployment. The president has pledged help them grow and expand hiring, but in order to promote the true survival and growth of small businesses, the first step to take would be to see to it that they aren’t saddled with higher tax burdens as a result of health care reform.
Commentators in the current health care debate often look to Canada’s and Britain’s public health care systems for hints as to what our future may resemble. The systems in each of those countries feature significant differences, however, both philosophically and operationally, that provide unique cautionary examples for the future of U.S. legislation.
Advocates of a nationwide public option for health insurance claim the plan would increase competition. Before layering the market with new bureaucracy, however, it’s important to consider how regulatory barriers already hamper competition in health insurance markets. Removing barriers is much more efficient than creating new ones.
In 1960, the private sector funded more than three quarters of the nation’s health care expenditures. Individuals paid nearly one half of total national health care expenditures through out-of-pocket expenditures. Beginning in 1967, the way health care is purchased in the United States began to reverse. This has resulted in a large and growing government “health care wedge” — an economic separation of effort from reward, of consumers (patients) from producers (health care providers) — caused by government policies. Rising government expenditures for health care are the main factor driving the growth of this wedge, which is a primary driver in rising health care costs, i.e., inflation in medical costs. Federal proposals for health care reform currently under consideration would exacerbate these problems, rather than solve them.
Many of us who have elderly family members living in nursing homes feel a natural urge to protect them through government regulation. But before passing new legislation, it’s important to determine whether the proposed regulations will actually have the desired effect of protecting Missouri’s elderly citizens.
The new “Insure Missouri” plan adds new layers of bureaucracy and centralized control to a system that needs exactly the opposite. If state government is going to subsidize health care for needy Missourians, it should convert existing entitlement programs into a system of vouchers that allow participants to purchase their own policies and establish health savings accounts.
Gov. Blunt’s new health care plan is designed to insure low-income workers. While the plan is fundamentally flawed, it gets one thing right: A system of targeted subsidies would do a much better job of providing quality, timely health care to the needy than the universal health plans that are often proposed today.
Although a circuit court judge recently struck down a controversial midwifery provision from a health insurance reform law, the measure deserves to be resurrected. Evidence shows that midwives provide safe, effective care to their patients. Expectant mothers are capable of making their own decisions about the type of care they wish to receive without state interference.
The Show-Me Institute’s vice president demonstrates, from personal experience, how Missouri’s new health insurance reform makes it easier for small businesses to help their employees set up and fund health savings accounts.
A long-awaited free-market step on the path to cover those without health insurance came out of Jefferson City on Friday. Gov. Matt Blunt signed HB 818, making Missouri the first state to permit pretax contributions from small business owners to their employees’ individually selected policies. Unlike other health care reform “solutions” that require more government intervention and bureaucracy—third-party or one-payer systems, employer mandates, tax hikes, and cost shifting—this law offers a common sense approach to health care reform.
The Missouri Legislature’s bill to reform workplace health insurance provides a common-sense approach to health care reform, rather than more government intervention and bureaucracy.
Most industries are open to all firms willing to make the necessary initial investments to enter the market. If I want to open a bar in my neighborhood, can clear the zoning restrictions, and have the necessary capital to rent a space, fill it with booze, and market it to my prospective customers, then that bar will open, with me as its proprietor. This open process creates an environment in which businesses compete for customers, encouraging the innovation that leads to higher quality and lower prices. Requiring a prospective bar owner to obtain a permission slip showing a need for another bar in their neighborhood would obviously be ridiculous. Unfortunately, this is exactly the requirement made by the state of any entrepreneur looking to offer health care services.
