[1]
Preexisting conditions can be insured and treated better by making changes that give people good incentives. Here are ten such changes:
| Change | Explanation |
| Create a national market for health insurance. | More competition, especially among the special needs insurers, would be a huge benefit for the chronically ill. Being able to buy insurance across state lines would encourage that competition. |
| Encourage portable insurance. | Most of the time, the problem of preexisting conditions arises precisely because health insurance isn’t portable. |
| Allow access to mandate-free insurance. | …mandates raise premiums… and divert dollars away… |
| Give individual buyers the same tax break employees get. | All insurance should get the same tax relief regardless of where it is obtained, and individuals should get the same tax relief, regardless of how they obtain it. |
| Encourage post-retirement health insurance. | …give post-retirement health insurance the same tax encouragement as active-worker insurance and allow pre-retirement insurance to be portable. |
| Allow special needs health insurance. | …allow plans to specialize in treating one or more chronic conditions. Plans could specialize, for example, in diabetic care, heart care, or cancer care, and they would be able to charge a market price (say, to employers, other insurers, and even risk pools)… |
| Allow providers to repackage and reprice their services under Medicare and Medicaid. | …to create innovative solutions to the care of diabetes, asthma, cancer, heart disease, and other chronic health issues… …providers should be able to offer a different bundle of services and be paid in a different way so long as they reduce the government’s overall cost and provide a higher quality of care. |
| Allow health status insurance. | …health status insurance would pay future premium increases people face if they have a change in health status and then try to switch to another health plan. You can think of this as a way of insuring against the emergence of preexisting conditions. |
| Allow self-insurance for changes in health status. | …people need the ability to engage in contingency savings—a Health Savings Account for future, rather than current, medical costs. |
| Allow special Health Savings Accounts for the chronically ill. | Cash and Counseling pilot programs in Medicaid are under way in more than half the states. Homebound, disabled patients manage their own budgets and hire and fire those who provide them with services. Satisfaction rates are in the mid-90 percentile (virtually unheard of in any health plan anywhere in the world). |
[2, pp. 249-251.]
…markets enjoy their greatest advantage in complex settings that call for imaginative solutions that no government-driven system can deliver.[2, p. 610.]
…you have got to let business make money out of the process…[3]
- “China Health Insurance For Pre-Existing Conditions.” China-Health-Insurance.com. www.china-health-insurance.com/china-information/coverage/pre-existing-conditions/. Accessed 23 Jan. 2017.
- Goodman, John C. Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis. Scribd ed., Independent Institute, 2012, pp. 249-251, 610.
- Higgs, Robert. Depression, war, and cold war: Studies in political economy. Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 30.