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The Health Insurance Fix - not

 by Thomas F. McMasters       Candidate U.S. House of Representatives

The widespread purchase of the traditional health insurance product is the cause of out of control medical care inflation.  When I talk about traditional health insurance I am including Medicare, employer based and individual purchase policies because all these basically work the same way. You can see my argument on why they are inflationary in my response to the Obama-Biden Healthcare Proposal.  There is a place for the traditional insurance plan but we as a nation would have been better served if these types of policies never covered more than 40% of the population.   Once more than 40% of the population was covered inflation was assured based on classic supply and demand principles.  More and more people were out there demanding more and more services.  High demand leads to increasing prices.  The bills currently in congress do two things.  1. They further increase demand. These bills bring 33 million people who previously avoided these services into the system and give them unfettered access.  The only possible result is a competition for medical resources - i.e. inflationary pressure.  2. It forces younger and healthier people (those that by the President's own admission don't normally need coverage) to put their money into the pool to help pay for someone else's care. i.e. provides more money so inflation can occur.  

There is an optimum percentage of the population that should be getting their medical services paid for through traditional health insurance and 100% is not the number.  In practically every endeavor competition strengthens traditional methods and specialized tools are needed to efficiently handle the outliers.  Just like, I and the 40 million other people that plant gardens in our back yard don't use the same tools as the corporate farmer uses to plant tomatoes, the country shouldn't be limited to just one method of paying for health care services.  Picking the first bushels of apples on the tree is quick but once the ground level apples are picked you need to switch methods and get a ladder.  The current health insurance products never will handle the outliers cost effectively.  Throwing these young kids money at it is just a waste of time and their money.  In fact, if you want to improve the nations healthcare system you would work to decrease the number of people with traditional health insurance.  There are many alternatives available today and the nation should strive to create even more avenues for health care.  Promoting methods other than traditional health insurance coverage will lead to health care reform.  Promoting traditional health insurance only benefits doctors and insurance companies.