Eliminate Employer Sponsored Health Insurance. Say What?

Eliminate Employer Sponsored Health Insurance -people will have the means to buy their own private insurance via their Health  Savings Accounts.  This means a raise for everyone who had employer sponsored healthcare (as that insurance is a big  part of total compensation.)  This solves all kinds of problems - gays, lesbians and other domestic partnerships won’t have to get permission to be on their partners’ policies.  They’ll buy them together out of their joint HSA.   The money once spent on insurance premiums - in our case $4000 per year - can now be deposited to your individual HSA, either directly or as a payroll deduction.

 But what about the poor?  I proposed the federal government fund the HSAs for the poor, no strings attached, and then just get out of the way.   Just because a family is poor does not mean they have to surrender their health care decisions to the government!  Let them use their own HSAs to purchase insurance of their choice, not Obama’s.   For the illegal aliens, let them find their own doctor.  Preferably in Mexico.   

For those who don’t have a permanent address here, the government could set up a large HSA for illegals and homeless to draw against when they need medical care.  It could be funded at $10,000 per estimated illegal.   The doctors and hospitals can then bill this government plan, but the government must pay the going (fair market) rate.   No more cutting payments like they do in Medicare, to shift cost to the privately insured.  In fact, the HSA’s-for- Illegals Program should not be run by the government - it should be run by private enterprise with GAO oversight only to prevent fraud or theft.   The feds get to make NO rules.  For once federal money will not have strings attached. At $10,000 for each of the “47 Million” uninsured, it would cost the govt. $470 Billion dollars, with the out years being substantially less as we realize cost savings on medical care and our HSAs grow.   That’s a lot less than Obamacare and the government would be OUT of the healthcare business.  Which is why Washington will never do something so elegantly simple as to let the people manage their own health care.