Protactix

Despite what we hear from Washington, I don’t know a liberal or a conservative who wants any citizen to go without decent health care at an affordable (but not free) price.

Neither side (from Washington) seems to want to give up political ground, neither has any meaningful mechanism to pay for universal health care, and both sides’ ideas will cause delay, meaning continuing suffering and higher costs.  What is often ignored is the cost of emegency room treatment and lost revenues resulting from untreated disease and untimely deaths.

A system that can be implemented in very short order would require existing private carriers to offer insurance rates based on one nationwide rating pool with no exclusions for “pre existing” conditions or lack of prior coverage.   To reduce costs, underwriters would not be allowed to deduct marketing or adverting expense from their taxes and such expenses could not be considered allowable expenses purposes of SEC reporting.

Health care premiums for low income earners could be adjusted by way of federal tax return filings.

Such a system could be in place in a matter of months.  In this way, nearly immediate relief would be in place, allowing the system to be fine tuned going forward.