It is a common tactic for people invested in a broken status quo to dismiss critics as "not understanding the complexities". Which insurance company or regulator do you work for? I've worked on health care policy professionally, I assure you I understand the issues.
Much of the distortion in the current system come from the fact that employers can deduct health care expenses, which means that you save around 15-30% versus buying healthcare as an individual with aftertax dollars. That single policy is what ties health care to your employers-- in my mind, a kind of serfdom that keeps people tied to jobs simply because of health care insurance.
So getting tax equality by eliminating the deduction, or extending it to individuals, would rock the market. Beyond that, it actually is as simple as allowing interstate competition, which will allow people to escape all of the insane state regulations, and lack of choice, that drive up costs.
And groups can't organize to purchase health care-- I'm talking about a world where my university alumni association or church has a plan, and I could choose that for life, and it has the same tax and regulatory treatment as my employer's health care offering. I want vastly more diverse delivery mechanisms, all competing for my business, and ideally with a long-term relationship that would naturally incentivize preventative care.
Didn't they bring up ending the employer deduction for insurance during the 2008 Presidential election? I'm all for it, but to make it politically viable you need to spin it in a way which doesn't look like raising taxes or reducing benefits, which is hard when eliminating a deduction. The only way I think it would work is to make personal insurance deductible, and somehow ensure that salaries take into account the implied value of current healthcare.
(Personally, I am so glad I have $100/mo $3500 deductible HSA coverage, personally; I'll eventually set up employer healthcare at my startup, but in the perfect world, I'd rather pay employees 1.5x as much to manage it themselves, and maybe another .5x to the government for other people's care; trying to find and manage benefits like that is a big pain.)
It's not forbidden. It's just rarely considered worth the space. I hate to say "lurk more", but you are new here, and you don't yet understand the complexities.
Much of the distortion in the current system come from the fact that employers can deduct health care expenses, which means that you save around 15-30% versus buying healthcare as an individual with aftertax dollars. That single policy is what ties health care to your employers-- in my mind, a kind of serfdom that keeps people tied to jobs simply because of health care insurance.
So getting tax equality by eliminating the deduction, or extending it to individuals, would rock the market. Beyond that, it actually is as simple as allowing interstate competition, which will allow people to escape all of the insane state regulations, and lack of choice, that drive up costs.
And groups can't organize to purchase health care-- I'm talking about a world where my university alumni association or church has a plan, and I could choose that for life, and it has the same tax and regulatory treatment as my employer's health care offering. I want vastly more diverse delivery mechanisms, all competing for my business, and ideally with a long-term relationship that would naturally incentivize preventative care.