It’s from a while back, and a lot has happened since it was written, but this is one of the best ideas for health care reform I’ve seen.

The author, Charles Krauthammer, argues the bill that is currently being (or has been? I’m on vacation) passed is severely flawed and suggests and defends three better ways to go about it. Essentially, health care reform should make the system simpler, not more complex (as the current 2,000+ bill would do).

One suggestion, which is so blatantly obvious that I don’t know why it hasn’t been done already, is to allow competition within the insurance industry across state lines. From the article:

Some states have very few health insurers. Rates are high. So why not allow interstate competition? After all, you can buy oranges across state lines. If you couldn’t, oranges would be extremely expensive in Wisconsin, especially in winter.

     And the answer to the resulting high Wisconsin orange prices wouldn’t be the establishment of a public option — a federally run orange-growing company in Wisconsin — to introduce “competition.” It would be to allow Wisconsin residents to buy Florida oranges.

Exactly. I really believe there needs to be health care reform. But I don’t think the way to do it is to have the government to step in, get bigger and move one step closer to a socialized state. The opposite needs to happen: the government needs to enable free market economics to do its thing and then get out of the way.

Thoughts? Point? Counter point? Let’s hear it in the comments.

Image courtesy of here.