Sometimes sitting on the bus can be a good way to brainstorm. This brainstorm came to me yesterday.
Instead of building another insurance company, why not buy out the existing ones? (I rejected that one, being too expensive, although I supposed a few would actually sell). So I brainstormed again and came up with this idea:
Give everyone a Medical Debit card with an annual value of $1.1 million. You wouldn't be able to get cash from it, but it would be good for every medical expense-pharmacy, therapy, hospitalization, aspirin-whatever is needed and can be documented. Any remaining balance gets rolled over into the next year and accumulates over time-in the end you could use your balance for nursing home care or long-term care facility expenses.
Such a plan would require only a minimum of bureaucracy-certainly wouldn't take over any hospitals, would make health care totally portable from state to state.
In short, Medical Stamps. We already do it for Food, but unlike Food Stamps, this would be good in all 50 states and U.S. Territories for any covered care.
I was incorrect on the math:Total spending was $2.4 TRILLION in 2007, or $7900 per person. Total health care spending represented 17 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP)..
But I would still have the card valued at $1 million-but it would be a pay as you go, paying actual health care costs per person with a cap at a million. Not everyone will charge the full million, it would be an allocation, and the amount unused would roll over to the next year, with only the amount needed to reach the cap covered under the card.
Nor is one million sacrosanct. We could probably do $100k or less, with the option of going over with approval.