COMMENTARY: Rootcare: The answer to the health-care debate
I love the Review-Journal’s readers. You challenged me — both conservatives and liberals. Liberals wrote, “If Obamacare is so terrible, what is your solution?” Conservatives wrote, “If the GOP replacement is so bad, what is your solution?” Here’s my answer: Rootcare.
Keep in mind, I’m not a politician, big businessman or Wall Street billionaire. I’m just a small businessman with simple, common-sense ideas. Why does health care tend to be so complicated? Why is Obamacare 2,000 pages long, with billions in spending and nonstop regulations?
How about repealing and replacing Obamacare with one page, two tiers and eight simple points.
1) Keep government out of it.
New York City’s subway system is failing this summer. Everything is broken. Subway cars are being held together with staples and bubble gum. Commuters are waiting for hours in sweltering heat. It’s pure misery. The MTA chairman’s response? “Commuters should leave for work earlier.”
This is government. Government does not work. Government can’t make the subways run on time. Or run at all. Government can’t run the VA. Vets are put on waiting lists to die. Government can’t run Amtrak. Government can’t win the war on drugs. Government fails at whatever it does — and it fails expensively.
If anyone should run it, give the health-care system to Amazon or Google or Walmart. But never the government.
2) Model our system after Singapore. First, everyone pays up to the first $10,000 in health-care bills themselves. They do it with a $10,000 health savings account — which is 100 percent tax deductible. Second, for all costs higher than $10,000, everyone must buy a bare-bones, catastrophic health insurance policy. That will cost something like $100 to $200 per month.
Simple. Cheap. Easy. Doable.
American middle-class families will never go broke from a health-care crisis or catastrophe. Everything above $10K in a year is covered. Just like car insurance, the little bills are your responsibility. But they are 100 percent tax deductible.
On the mandate issue, both Democrats and Republicans have it wrong. There is a “mandate” with my plan. Just like everyone must carry car insurance, everyone must take a simple, bare-bones insurance policy. But not the onerous, super-expensive mandate Obama demanded.
Who can’t afford $100 to $200 per month? That’s what should have been the national plan from day one.
3) You can buy your policy anywhere — across state lines. Watch costs come down dramatically.
4) You can buy your prescriptions anywhere — across national borders. Buy your prescriptions in Mexico, Canada or Switzerland — wherever it’s cheapest. Watch costs come down dramatically.
5) Mandate that doctors and hospitals post prices for every procedure online — so you can pick your doctor based on affordability. Watch costs come down dramatically.
6) Tort reform: Limit the lawsuit rewards. Patients have a right to sue, but not win the lottery. Watch costs come dramatically down.
7) Make preventative health our national priority. Your gym membership, home gym equipment, vitamins, herbs and holistic doctor visits are the way to make America healthy again. So make it all 100 percent tax deductible under your health savings account.
8) No matter what Congress passes, its members have to live by the exact same rules as the rest of us.
That’s my plan. Rootcare: Tier One.
That leaves one missing link — the poor. They get their own system. Call it “Rootcare: Tier Two.” The poor get some version of government-run health care. It’s no-frills, but free. But it doesn’t affect the rest of us. It doesn’t ruin my health care.
But … there’s a work requirement, just as many states have put a work requirement on welfare or food stamps. Guess what happened? The rolls dropped by 50 percent, thereby saving taxpayers billions of dollars.
You want free health care? If you don’t want to work, you don’t get the check. No one gets a free ride. America is great again. America is fair again. Health care solved.
Contact Wayne Allyn Root at rootforamerica.com.
