Health Alert from John Goodman

The liberals have it all wrong. Conservatives are not lacking health reform ideas. They’re drowning in them.

Following the publication of Mark Pauly and John Goodman’s “Tax Credits for Health Insurance and Medical Savings Accounts,” many right-of-center health policy analysts endorsed the principle of lump sum tax credits to subsidize private health insurance and most endorsed some version of Health Savings Accounts [here and here]. The patient-centered point of view in John Goodman and Gerald Musgrave’s Patient Power, and the focused-factory, supply-side competition envisioned in Regina Herzlinger’s Consumer Driven Health Care are also generally accepted.

These ideas are reflected in the Coburn/Burr/Ryan/Nunes bill as well as in the health plan John McCain adopted when running for president, although neither plan has been endorsed by most Republican Members of Congress.

Beyond that, where do conservatives stand on the critical problems of controlling costs, increasing quality, improving access to care and reforming insurance markets? Answer: they’re all over the place. In fact, there is probably no other public policy area on which there is so much diversity of right-of-center opinion than there is right now on health policy. This may explain why the current House Republican plan is so anemic.

A brief summary of conservative/libertarian proposals is below the fold.

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Cheers,

John Goodman
President and CEO
Kellye Wright Fellow
National Center for Policy Analysis
12770 Coit Rd., Suite 800
Dallas, Texas 75251
http://www.ncpa.org