On the Verge

This is a bit past due, but I saw a couple problems (easily corrected) with Bush's plan.

First, its centerpiece was tax deductions. While I like the idea of lower taxes and putting more money in the hands of consumers, when the deduction is directed toward health care, you effectively flood the health care market with new money. This increases the demand, while the supply stays steady. So, the price of care goes up, and all the money that went back to the consumers ultimately ends up in the hands of the health care companies. It's a backdoor way of paying off the health care companies that support the GOP and President Bush - it doesn't ultimately save people money or make more health care available to them.

Second (and this is the biggest problem), it doesn't address the fundamental problem with health care, which is the fact that health care is not a competitive industry, which means people pay too much for a crappy product. If anything, Bush's proposals tend to make it LESS competitive.

People need to own their own accounts (HSAs) and make their own decisions about when they need to go to the doctor and have to manage how much money they spend. Right now, people don't pay more when they get unnecessary care - their employer pays more. So, people get tons and tons of unnecessary care and waste billions of dollars every year, making health care unaffordable for everyone else. Ultimately, we need to break the connection between employment and health care and let people shop for health care the same way that they do for groceries (which are incredibly cheap - makes sense, huh?).

Anyway, that's my take on it.

A little bit of victory this week bro...