Term Paper on Ideal Health Care System
(First 3 Pages)
Moving in to the 21st century bring us to the hard fact that our health care system is not well aquatinted to meet the information age challenges and must go through certain reforms. These hard facts are outlined by the National Center for Policy Analysis. This paper has tried to summarize the main issues as to what is required for an ideal health care system and what are the characteristics of it. Keeping aside the financial burden of providing charity care to the poor, the main reason as has been identified, is the ‘free rider’ theory. To this issue, the proposed solution is the purchase of the insurance by the masses. But the NCPA proposes a much better solution that would limit the role of government and expands the choices open to every citizen.
One of the many solution provided is subsidizing those who insure and
penalizing those who do not insure. NCPA gives the example that, under the
current system families who obtain insurance by way of an employer earn a
tax subsidy worth about $1,155, on the average. As an uninsured family with
an average income does not receive this allowance, the uninsured family will
pay about $1,155 more in taxes than families that have employer-provided
insurance. Consequently instead of depicting our current system as one that
subsidizes employer-provided insurance, we could, with equated cogency,
describe it as one that amerces the deficiency of employer-provided
insurance.
The second option that the report place is the subsidy or penalty should
similar the value society places on insuring individuals, at the edge. “We
should decide how much we care (in money terms) whether a person is insured
and that should determine the size of the subsidy/penalty” (Pauly and
Goodman, 1995). Any other policy would require expenditure too much on
subsidies and amassing too much in fines, or otherwise. An unvaried subsidy
would offer the same tax reduction to everybody who earns private insurance,
and that subsidy should mirror the value our society places on having one
more person insured. The third option that the repot gives is that the
penalties paid by the uninsured should be used to make up for those who
provide free care to the uninsured. The funds should be put to use to make
up for providers who give free care to the uninsured. However, under the
present system the uninsured pay greater taxes because they do not relish
the tax relief given to those who have employer-provided insurance. These
greater taxes are a "fine" for being uninsured. The question is the spare
taxes paid are directly clumped in with other revenues collected by the U.S.
Treasury in Washington, D.C., while the cost of redeeming free care falls to
local doctors and hospitals.
In an ideal system, the government would offer every single person a relief.
If the individual realized private insurance, the subsidy would be realized
in the form of lower taxes, like tax credit. Thus, if the person select to
be uninsured, the subsidy would be sent to a protection net agency in the
abbey where the individual lives. Unique way to contemplate of such an
settlement is to see it as a system under which the uninsured as a group pay
for their own free care. That is turning down a tax credit uninsured
individuals would pay extra taxes precisely balanced to the average amount
of free care given each year to the uninsured. (Goodman and Musgrave, 1992)
The fourth option are the subsidies for the insured that should, at the
margin, be funded by curtailing spending on free care for the uninsured.
Because much of the safety net spending previously consists of federal
funds, the federal government could use its share to fund private insurance
tax credits instead. For the rest, the federal government could lessen
grants to Texas for Medicaid and other programs.
The fifth recommendation is that the subsidies for being insured should be
unconstrained of how the insurance is purchased. The American health care
system is copiously an employer-based system, in which more than 90 percent
of people with health insurance earn it from an employer. In late years many
have inquired the wisdom of having employers select health plans for their
employees. Intensifying, there is intrigue in a system of personal and
transferable insurance in which individuals take their insurance with them
as they voyage from job to job and employers make defined-contribution
premium payments to the plans their employees select. Such effects should be
determined in the marketplace, rather than by the tax-writing committees of
the U.S. Congress. By comparison, families who purchase their own insurance
get essentially no assistance under the tax law. Thus, an ideal system would
give the same tax relief, indifferent of how the insurance is bought.
......
All rights reserved © 2000-2009, Top Term Papers