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.
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.
