Chuckles Has A Plan

Charles Krauthammer comes up with how to fix health care in 2 easy steps:

Abolish the entire medical-malpractice system. Create a new social pool from which people injured in medical errors or accidents can draw. The adjudication would be done by medical experts, not lay juries giving away lottery prizes at the behest of the liquid-tongued John Edwardses who pocket a third of the proceeds.

And for his next trick...

Tax employer-provided health-care benefits and return the money to the employee with a government check to buy his own medical insurance, just as he buys his own car or home insurance.

No really, that's his entire plan, let doctors determine what malpractice is rather than juries (no conflict of interest there) and raise taxes on a couple hundred million Americans.

The practical upshot of the plan is doctors on the malpractice boards would of course nearly always determine that their fellow health care professionals acted rightly, and every business in America would immediately drop their health care coverage, forcing everybody to self-insure. The results would be a nation of underinsured Americans with no or little insurance (as the more insurance you have, the more taxes you pay as they would count as income) and the more you use the insurance, the further behind you come out in the deal. Yes, you would get a tax rebate on your insurance benefits to use to pay the premium, but it would do nothing to help with your out of pocket costs.

In other words, the scheme would force millions of Americans into either no insurance (they don't have the income to pay the additional taxes an insurance plan's benefits would cause) or catastrophic insurance only, which would have maximum out of pocket costs to the insured. The insurance companies would get premiums and have to pay out as little as possible, which would basically be the best way to maximize insurance company profits. It also would save businesses lots of money as they would simply drop health insurance benefits, they won't have to pay taxes on the benefits, and they get to put the onus of all the paperwork on the employee, and then you just get rid of your benefits people in HR.

That's Chuck's solution there to fix health care: forcing Americans to self-insure at the worst possible rates to get underinsured, and then pray they never actually get sick because they won't be able to afford it. Great plan, huh?