A Voluntary FDA would lower health care costs and give us access to better service and products. For argument and research sake, I really recommend everyone watch Stossel and see how the FDA Kills far more than it saves.
The best point made is when a new drug is approved and everyone celebrates how it will save 50,000 people a year. That means that for the 15 years of testing, it killed 750,000 by not being available.
The FDA should be voluntary just like Underwriters Laboratories or UL. Who are they? Look at nearly every single thing you plug in to the wall that is more than just a wire. That charger is UL tested. Everyone does it even though it is completely voluntary.
If the FDA were voluntary, anyone wanting only FDA approved would have that option. It would be the Gold Standard of approvals. If you are willing to go without the FDA it is your choice, some will some will not. By having different voluntary levels of accreditation would allow us to judge how thoroughly tested it has been. Liberals read this and say, “I would be smart enough to make a good decision but others are not”.
Matt
http://talkofliberty.com
This new health care bill which has passed does not help reform any of the issues regarding cost. Though I am a Libertarian idealist, I can think of ways which provide state support for those who may need financial assistance. I understand in the ideal world, all government programs ultimately hurt individuals and I associate the programs that are intended to help those in need as reason those same people are in need. The reason is the cost. Government is a terrible system of allocating resources. Here is my Libertarian fix to this health care reform I hope those running for election in November will consider and try and implement.
The ultimate goal of any government program should be to lower the amount of individuals using assistance not grow it. With that goal in mind, first we need to look at where we are in order to create a plan of where we are going.
In scouring the internet to figure out the average cost of a Medicaid recipient since this is how the most of those not covered will be covered under this healthcare reform. This report gives us a quick idea of what the average cost per Medicaid recipient is. Keep in mind most doctors are now not even accepting new Medicaid patients even with the average cost being $10,918 per year in Arizona.
Rather than spending $10,918 per person on a plan that then requires the individual to not pay any money out of pocket, we can simply issue a voucher to that individual for that amount, deposited directly into an HSA. The Health Savings Account should be able to be used to pay any medical expenses including premiums as well as deductibles and medications. So now that we are depositing this money into a savings account, let’s now look at what a non government option would look like for individuals.
Using www.ehealthinsurance.com I simply did a quick look for insurance plans for someone who I consider expensive. So I could make this very difficult I used a female who is 55 years old living in Arizona. We can find the highest deductable where we can get the most bang for the buck if you will. This would be the United Health One Plan 100 policy. The choosing the highest deductible that this person could use the voucher with this plan makes the deductible $7,500 per year and has a monthly cost of only $156 dollars.. What this means is that after $7,500 is spent, the insurance company will pay for 100% of all medical expenses beyond that amount. This plan also covers prescription drugs in it as well. It would be important, that any money saved and not spent after one year from the HSA would be allowed to be withdrawn by the individual as earned income or rolled into an IRA. This way it is their money if they do not waste it rather than use it or lose it.
Ok so here is how it will work. Individual would be given the voucher for $10,918 instead of being forced to take an expensive government plan. This private insurance plan will only cost $1,872 per year. Subtract that cost from the voucher cost and the difference; $9,046 would be deposited into the individuals HSA.
Over the course of an entire year, under the policy above the most an individual could have to pay if they are sick would be the deductable of $7,500 leaving $1,546 left over to start since this is above what 100% coverage with all co-pays and deductable covered. I just saved America $1,546 per person already.
What is better about this plan is how it would empower individuals to save. The individual will be rewarded for living a healthy lifestyle. Those who smoke, eat unhealthy foods, and do not work out, are also those who need medical care more often. This means they will use their deductable money for health care. Those who live a healthier lifestyle will be rewarded financially. Consider if a married couple is actually healthy and just need their regular checkups. They may only spend $500 dollars for the year on medical expenses total. This would actually reward them for being healthy with over $15,000 dollars in additional income for the year.
Anyone wanting a free power chair will think twice about the cost since it will come out of their HSA savings and they will receive that much left in income at the end of the year. This plan would also lower lawsuit issues with doctors since individuals will decide for themselves if they should use their savings for medical tests. Doctors and patients will make decisions together rather than insurance companies or bureaucrats. If an individual decides not to get a treatment, they own that decision; therefore they will not likely sue the doctor since they made the decision themselves. This is who should decide if a service should be rendered or not.
In the bigger picture having a voucher will freeze the growth of medical costs. Clearly in this plan there is plenty of money to be saved. Giving the poor and needy vouchers rather than a plan they do not control savings leads to over use. They will think twice before going to an ER rather than waiting until the next morning to see their doctor. This will begin to turn this massive ship around. We need to control health care costs.
As a libertarian, I can support this because I have realized the transition is more important than an all or nothing battle. This model makes it easier to scale back the amount of subsidies i.e. vouchers are given based on need. If someone makes enough money, it would be reasonable to see the voucher amount decreased accordingly. The ultimate goal of this would be to get all individuals to the point of prosperity where they do not need subsidies. Attaching the welfare checks into the subsidies like this would be far more beneficial to society by rewarding healthy behavior.
This is a scalable plan that gets a handle on costs and will help unleash the free markets for health care. This will be good for individuals.
Matt
I am going to go with my gut on this one. Everyone is trying to figure out why the heck student loan reform is in this Health Care Bill. I think I know the answer when I had an aha moment. Now stay with me, but I am taking a guess at this one.
Every conversation I have heard about the reconciliation process is it can be used to reduce deficits. Everyone knows that cutting out the middle man was guaranteed to save a lot of money in the student loan process (it will continue to blow a massive education bubble, but that is besides the point). In political terms, I think this is like holding a wild trump card. At some point someone new that reconciliation requires deficit savings. By throwing in this student loan reform, it bumped up the ten year savings by billions.
My question, since I am just a regular guy is, does the 100 billion in deficit reduction over ten years come from student loan savings not Health Care savings? Is the student loan savings what the CBO scored and made this bill able to go through with reconciliation? If left out of the final bill, would this bill save Americans anything?
I think this Health Care Bill doesn’t reduce the deficit at all. They have smoke and mirrors to make sure it happens. Take away the 60 billion I have read student loan reform saves and this 940 billion dollar bill equals over a trillion.
We have been hoodwinked. Well played Pelosi and Reed, and Obama, but I am calling you on it.
This whole thing is very fishy to me, I want to raise this flag first. Can someone answer these questions for me?
Please Digg this story if you think I am on to something.
Anyone reading this health care bill which was just posted online will quickly see just how scary this bill is. Everything I keep reading keeps deffering all decisions to the Secretary of Health. Every medical decision is going to be decided if it is fair. The Secretary will have the power to literally run the entire Health Insurance industry.
I think it is quite clear we are actually getting a single payer system with this reform. Everything in health insurance will be regulated and you will see co-pays, deductables, coverage all determined by our new health Dictator.
On the practical side, I have a question for the bureaucrats, it sounds great that all insurance will now have to cover everything right? What happens if somone needs a surgery and there are two ways of performing it. Option one is very expensive but uses the latest technology which makes the entire procedure pain free and easy. Option 2 is an old technique that is far cheaper and often has far more complications in outcome.
Now that insurance companies will basically be zombies run by the dictator, there is no longer an incentive to offer the better coverage than other companies. They will look at each case as an expense and opt for less costly. They will opt of the lower quality of care since they have no pricing power and no ability to offer a different insurance product to their customers, and they will be the monopoly in charge due to these regulations, so you will have nowhere to get better care.
This Health Care Reform Bill is scary, just read it and ask yourself the simple question of how will the secretary of health our new dictator, know what is best for the 300 million people. Make no mistake, this is Socialism, it is here, it is scary.
The CBO has returned with the estimated cost of the next ten years of health care reform. A mere $940,000,000,000.00 dollars for ten years. This is likely to be completely wrong and end up costing far more for Americans since it will destroy even more levels of competition through oppressive new regulations and mandates.
One overlooked fact regarding this comprehensive reform package is how it will basically cost $1 trillion dollars to cover an extra 31 million people. I question the idea that those 31 million do not have coverage since half of them are young in between jobs youth who probably do not even need coverage. Regardless, the average cost per person will be a staggering 3000 dollars per year for ten years to cover them for ten years, but the reality is it will cover them for 6 years meaning it is closer to $5,000 per person. Keep in mind, half of this pool is a low risk pool with little cost to cover.
The second overlooked cost of HC reform is the fact that the trillion is the cost of 31 million extra to be covered. What about the other 200 million people who already have insurance? Democrats state that this will lower the cost of insurance for employers to pay for or individuals to buy. I ask how? This bill changes nothing regarding competition or reducing regulations which drive up prices. The only thing in this bill is more coverage mandates. This will no doubt cost everyone more in the bigger picture over the next ten years. Let’s be extremely gracious to the democrats plan and only assume this bill adds additional costs of $100 dollars a year to everyone else, it would add an additional 2 trillion dollars in cost. This is an additional 2 trillion dollars that will pay for red tape not creating a job or healthier people.
Because there is nothing in this bill that increases competition and it was written by pharmaceutical executives, that means this bill can only lower costs through price controls which have never succeeded and always lead to rationing with less supply than demand. This bill will most likely suck at least another 3 trillion dollars out of our economy and divert it to unproductive areas, lowering the overall capacity of wealth generation in our economy. Small businesses will likely be crushed initially since it will takes months to find loopholes around regulations rather than pay for them.
