A healthcare plan we can get behind?

One of President Obama’s jibes at members of the opposition party is that all they can do is obstruct. “The Party of No,” according to him, has fine-tuned its complaints, but where are its solutions? It’s all well and good to badmouth Obamacare, but where are the ideas?

Alternatives to Obamacare have been circulating for some time, even before the so-called Affordable Care Act was on the table. The problem has not been a lack of proposals but a lack of coordination and a unified strategy. Now at long last the slow gears of federal lawmaking from the right have begun to move.

Last year, Orrin Hatch, Richard Burr, and Tom Coburn—Republican senators from Utah, North Carolina, and Oklahoma, respectively, drafted a credible plan for replacing Obamacare, cleverly titled the “Patient Choice, Accountability, Responsibility, and Empowerment Act” (Patient CARE). Coburn retired from the Senate this year, but U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., has thrown his influence behind a slightly altered version of the plan, unveiled Feb. 4. Of course, it isn’t perfect—Mount Sinai was probably the last place a perfect law was proposed—but the Burr, Hatch, and Upton plan is at least a stable structure for building a far more market-based, limited-government approach to healthcare.

Among its desirable omissions: no individual or employer mandates, no federally supported exchanges, and no IPAB (Independent Payment Advisory Board—Sarah Palin’s “death panel”). Among its attractive features: means-tested tax credits or health savings accounts (HSAs), which individuals can use to purchase their own insurance, the freedom to shop for insurance across state lines, and the same free-market access to Medicaid enrollees. The plan restores clarity about the purpose of health insurance: mainly to meet emergencies or catastrophic illnesses, not to cover regular checkups and medicines that most of us can and should pay out of pocket. (Without insurance overhead, these routine costs will go down.)

On the supply side, hospitals, doctors, pharmacies, and insurance companies will be required to provide accurate cost information. On the demand side, medical malpractice suits would be brought under control with caps on legal fees and non-economic damages—important keys to reducing frivolous lawsuits and the wasteful practice of “defensive medicine.” The plan retains one key Obamacare feature: It keeps adult children up to the age of 26 under their parents’ insurance, but the sponsors of the bill expect that more of these “children” will leave the nest as healthcare costs come down.

I thought about titling this column “Warning—boring policy article” because my eyes tend to glaze over while trying to follow wonky government matters. But as Obamacare continues to slide faster toward disaster, alternative plans must be waiting in the wings. This looks like a good one, even though the usual suspects are lining up to pooh-pooh it. I suggest we educate ourselves and be ready to make our voices heard when the opportunity to repeal Obamacare finally arrives.