Go to health care

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about (thanks for bird dogging this, jdoublep).

It's clear that to make a mostly free-market plan work, those with chronic illnesses need to be protected. Fortunately, the template is already in place. About 30 states, usually those without requirements for community rating or guaranteed issue, have high-risk pools that automatically enroll people with pre-existing conditions. Their premiums generally can't exceed 150% of the average plan within the state, even though the patients may actually cost far more. The full costs of the high-risk pools are covered from state income- and sales-tax revenues.

It seems like so much of the so-called discussion on this issue (and pretty much any issue of public policy these days) is of the either or nature. Either you're in favor of the government completely taking over health care and providing everything to everybody, or you think health care is fine the way it is and that government should leave the situation unchanged because socialism is teh suck.

It's rare to have people take a look at the entire scope of the problem, think outside of the party lines, and propose options other than the two extremes. And even though health care reform this year is dead, hopefully we'll start to see more of this kind of thinking.

tagged: health care, reform, Obama, Shawn Tully, partisanship, politics, policy