Saturday, December 29, 2007

Saving State Health Dollars

We all agree that having more affordable health insurance would be a good thing. What should be clear, but apparently isn't, is that more competition and wider consumer choice would create a more efficient health insurance market.

In Kentucky, we seem to like to pack our insurers with mandated benefits. This increases costs, pricing more people out of the market. So, rather than address the root cost of the higher prices, we then seek to subsidize those prices with tax dollars. Any economics textbook would tell you this just causes prices to go up further still.

We need to give up the long-running lawsuit against Christian Care Medi-Share and encourage more such providers to come to the state. We need to shut down the ICARE subsidy Governor Beshear wants to expand.

And we need to give insurers more flexibility on which people they agree to insure.