No Health Care Insurance

As my family and friends were eating hamburgers and hot dogs at Lincoln Park on Sunday we were approached by a man who wanted our old pop cans and a quarter. We gladly gave up the pop cans and instead of a quarter we gave him a plate of food (and another plate of food he took to his "brother"). Not to big a deal in my book. But what I found interesting was the bandage on his arm and 2 hospital wrist bands on his wrist. This fella, obviously did not have a large bank account to go to the hospital, so it got me thinking about why are we having this health care debate in the first place. This guy got medical care and I doubt he was insured.

I took these statistics of the website rationalliberty.com. This is a snapshot of the people that do not have health insurance:

Total uninsured: 45 million

Non-citizens: 10 million

Between 18 and 34 (I'll call them the bulletproof class, can afford insurance but do not wish to afford insurance because a new car or jet ski is more fun) 8 million

The wealthy (can afford insurance but choose not to afford insurance) 17 million

Children that can be covered by existing plans but have never been signed up: 6 million

So if remove all these people from the total what do we get: 4 million uninsured. A much better number to deal with don't you think? That brings me to the homeless guy in the park, how did he pay for his medical care? I don't really think he was insured but somehow got help, didn't he?

Maybe we need to focus more of our attention on the real cost of health care instead of the uninsured. If the costs go down wouldn't more people be insurable?

Here is a health insurance idea we can look at:

If you are going to have some sort of government plan, how about a matching funds scenario. Lets say an employer decides to place $2,500 in a health care savings account (Which is much cheaper then they will have to pay for health insurance) for each employee. The government matches that amount. The employee can use that money ($5000) for what ever medical treatment that they choose (eyeglasses, physicals, etc).

The employee has the control of the money and then can be in a place to bargain with the health care provider to possibly get a lower cost. For example I'm going to Doctor X because I know he will give me a physical for 35 bucks instead of Doctor Y who will charge 65 bucks. Or maybe my kid doesn't really need drugs to keep their hyperactivity down maybe they just need a spanking.

You make the plan portable from job to job and state to state. It is your (the employee's) health care plan.

Then at the end of the year the employee gets to choose weather to keep the money in the account earning interest for future medical problems or to withdrawal that money into say an IRA or some sort of retirement plan.

This little plan, even if it did not have the government matching funds, would help drive costs down, eliminating a lot of unneeded procedures because people would be spending their own money not some insurance company money.

That is just a plan example; I am sure their are a lot smarter capitalist plans, that do not involve the government, that would work much better than the current bill in Congress.

We already cover everybody in the country (the homeless guy) lets make it so an aspirin does not cost $20 bucks when we go to the hospital.