Recently, I've published several articles highly critical of the Obama Administration's and Congress's attempts to "reform" our health care system.  That's because the Democrats are determined to sneak in, one way or another, so-called single payer health care coverage, whereby the government provides health care insurance as a last resort.  The Dems insist this insurance will be cheaper than that provided by private health insurance companies, as indeed it probably will.  The government can always hold down costs by dictating low payments to doctors for various procedures.  They already do this with Medicare, and to heck with the doctors' need to make enough money to pay back the large student loans they took out to get through medical school.  The problem with this plan is that eventually the government health insurance, since it will undoubtedly be cheaper, will squeeze most if not all private insurers out of the market, leaving the government as our health care monopolist.  Anyone who's familiar with MediCare and the VA health care system can only guess how bad this would be.

Even when the Dems deny they're after single-payer government health care - anymore - they tout the need to mandate insurance coverage for all Americans, which will be subsidized for people who can't afford it.  But there are at least some people, young adults in good health, estimated to be as many as 25% of the Americans who have no health insurance coverage, who are voluntarily declining to be covered because they feel they have better uses for their money.  In a free country, how can we force them to pay for coverage?  

On the other hand, there are few simple changes we could make to the laws concerning health insurance that would go a long way towards ensuring that everyone who wants coverage can get it at the least possible cost.  First, it's currently illegal for residents of a state to acquire health insurance from another state, effectively granting insurance companies a monopoly on health insurance within their state.  A federal law allowing insurance companies to sell policies to individuals and corporations in other states would effectively eliminate in-state monopolies and force health insurers to compete with each other on a regional and national basis.  This measure will ensure that all Americans will have access to the maximum number of insurance plans, and the resulting increase in competition will force insurers to lower prices and offer a wider variety of services.

Second, to give Americans an incentive to purchase health insurance, the federal government could offer tax credits, or at least deductions, if credits prove to be too expensive, for health care contributions.  Individual Americans would surely see the logic of taking advantage of these tax benefits to invest in health care.  At the same time, the loss of revenue from these individual tax benefits could be made up by taxing employer health care contributions.  I realize that such a measure would be unpopular with a large segment of the population - tax increases always are - but the reality is that employer benefits such as this constitute a very real form of income and should be taxed as such.  For example, if your employer contributes $5000 to your health care plan each year, it's the same as if you received $5000 from him in extra wages and invested in a health care plan yourself - except in the latter case, you'd have paid taxes on it first.  With this new system, you'll receive the wages from your employer instead and claim a tax credit, or at least a deduction.  This will have the effect of shifting the burden of providing health care insurance from employers to individuals.  Given the fact that many employees of small businesses already have no employer-provided health insurance, this can only be a good thing.

Finally, the health care tax credit could be used to provide an incentive to contribute to health insurance savings accounts, which could be built up when individuals are young and healthy and require little care for use when they're older and more in need of more extensive health care.  Individuals could enhance their contribution rate by accepting higher deductible health insurance, which has commensurately lower premiums, and giving the difference into the savings accounts.

Together, these initiatives - providing increased competition and availability of insurance by eliminating the out-of-state restrictions, providing tax incentives, and establishing a system of medical care savings accounts - will transform the American health care system.  And the beauty of it will be that it will use the free market to accomplish it.  Given that the market enables individual buyers to express their preferences by "putting their money where their mouth is," that can only be a good thing.