Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. (F, 16%) is famous for declaring health care a right. He is actually correct if we were to tweak his statement to read, “free market health care is a natural right.” Yes, we the people have a right to finally create a free market health care system that will do to the medical field what Uber, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Walmart, FedEx, and UPS have all done to their respective industries.
In so many ways, health care and health insurance – and no, the two are not the same – have missed the great technological revolution. The reason? Big, bad government.
It’s time to bust apart the regulatory state that enriches the big government-big business cartel. And we can start with these 20 ideas on a state and federal level that kick government to the curb and return the power to consumers, entrepreneurs, and health care providers:
Health care reforms
- End the medical malpractice boondoggle
- Allow hospitals to turn away non-urgent illegal aliens
- Offer a tax deduction for those providing health care to indigents
- Reform FDA approval process … big time
- Make more drugs available over the counter
- Stop boxing out specialty hospitals with burdensome certifications
- Expand who can deliver care so health providers have to compete for the customer
- Promote telemedicine and other modern delivery systems
- Break the AMA monopoly on medicine and prevention of for-profit healthcare
- Repeal the HIPAA regulatory leviathan
- Encourage health care providers to post prices online
Health insurance reforms
- Tear down regulations
- Promote health status insurance to deal with pre-existing conditions
- Stop socially engineering employer-based insurance through the tax code and treat it the same as individual plans
- Allow unlimited Health Savings Account spending
- Let consumers and employers purchase health insurance plans across state lines
- Permit individuals to pool together for group insurance
- Change antitrust laws so Big Pharma’s stranglehold on competition is destroyed
- Make Medicaid work with the market, not destroy it
- Allow affluent seniors to opt out of Medicare