Kristina Peterson, covering the senate health bill in in theJuly 11 Wall Street Journal reports a ray of hope for our legislative and policy process:
“If we’re going to subsidize Americans who can’t afford health insurance, do it directly. Don’t do it through the premiums of others,” said Sen. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.)Few wiser words were spoken.
Our government wants to subsidize some people's health insurance -- poor, sick, old, disabled, veterans, children, people with specific diseases, and so on. And, in many cases, rightly so. But our politics are allergic to "tax and spend." So, we hide it -- we force some people to buy overpriced insurance to subsidize others.
It is financially completely equivalent to taxing and spending. To those who don't want "taxing and spending," you are fooling yourself by allowing cross subsidies instead.
Except it's far more damaging to the economy than the disincentives of broad-based taxation.
C ross-subsidies cannot stand competition.
If competition and free entry are allowed, insurers offer policies tailored to the wealthy, healthy, young, able-bodied, etc., and peel them off from the cross-subsidy scheme. The equivalent tax and spend can simply say, here is a voucher, go buy health care and insurance from an innovative, competitive, dynamic, cost conscious markets.
A health care and insurance market that subsidizes certain groups cannot be competitive. Then costs spiral, then health care and insurance are even more "unaffordable," then the need for subsidies is greater, the overpriced insurance rises to ridiculous costs, and people need to be herded ever more reluctantly into the system.
Peterson's reporting neatly captures this lovely revelation.
The biggest sticking point in recent days has centered on a provision supported by GOP Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah that would allow insurers that sell plans complying with ACA regulations to also sell health policies that don’t.Well, that sounds sensible, no? Why ban competition and innovation in health insurance? Whatever happened to selling insurance across state lines anyway? Well,
Health analysts say that would likely lower premiums for younger, healthier people, who would buy more limited policies, while causing premiums to rise for people with pre-existing conditions, who would buy the more comprehensive plans that comply with the ACA.And
“His proposal would lead to unaffordable rates for people with pre-existing conditions,” Ms. Collins said Monday of Mr. Cruz’s proposal.Cross subsidies cannot stand competition.
Senator Flake has it right. We are at a crossroads. America can choose to acknowledge the extent of subsidies we wish to have in our health care system, and forthrightly tax people to provide subsidies, transparently, on budget, where we can see what we're doing, and allow a vibrant competitive health care and insurance market to emerge -- or we can continue the cross-subsidy / anti-competition spiral to its inevitable denouement.
The Cruz/Lee/Collins/Flake debate hopefully makes that choice abundantly clear. That this little bit of freedom -- you're allowed to sell off-exchange policies again -- cannot be tolerated ought to make the choice so clear, so stark, so simple that perhaps they will all see that "muddle through" is at an end.
Michael E. C. Moss puts it well in a related blog post,
the obvious compromise, the only good solution, is to do both: free-market pricing of healthcare and insurance in order to drive down prices, coupled with government subsidies for the needy to enable them to buy care and insurance at market prices.
