Bill Evans on Healthcare

While virtually everybody in the country agrees that the current health care situation is unsustainable, the big question is what do we do and how do we do it.  I believe rather than forcing everybody in this country into what will become a government run health care system, we need to bring competition and free market principles into the discussion immediately.  I strongly believe that people should own their own health care plans and that they should be portable.  We need to remove many of the boundaries that allow only a few companies to provide insurance in some states, and let every qualified company offer insurance across the country.  This is the type of competition that will bring prices down.  In addition we need common sense tort reform that would allow for people who are injured in some way to receive a just compensation, but not be allowed to hit the jackpot in court because they have a slick lawyer or a sympathetic jury.

We also need to bring insurance companies into the discussion to see if they can offer policies with different levels of deductions, catastrophic only coverage, medical savings accounts, or any other type of account that will give the buyer the choice.  One other option I would also like to see if it can be done is ‘LIFETIME INSURANCE.’  My idea would be for insurance companies to offer a policy that can be written prior to any child being born and a schedule of payments for a certain number of years.  This might help offset the concerns that are currently being discussed about pre-existing conditions.  The thought that a company has to write a policy regardless of a pre-existing condition is like waiting until your house is on fire before buying home owners insurance or waiting until you total your car before buying auto insurance…it sounds good on paper but isn’t a serious solution.