I think a lot of the ‘add competition to the current system’ ideas are terrific, and I’ve proposed a couple. But, to reduce costs requires more force from government. It’s quite the opposite of a mandate which would bring more customers to the system and more profits, but similar in that government forces something (a mandate is quite forceful).

First I suppose, one would have to decide precisely how much money to wring out of the health care & insurance industry. Then you would match that somehow to standards by which people could qualify for subsidized (partial or whole) insurance. On one side is X dollars and on the other is Y people representing X dollars of insurance to subsidize.

These are very political-economic questions, but there might be some beginning points in the numbers of people already involved in certain programs or who are uninsured altogether and the dollars which would be needed to insure all of them as though in employee plans.

On the other side you have to tax the industry somehow to raise that money which would be fed into insurance on behalf of the special groups to be insured.

Hard as it is to imagine there are quite a few gov’t programs you could fold into this idea and maybe not eliminate them entirely, but certainly shrink them tremendously. You’d still have to have bureaucracy to gather information determining someone’s qualifications for admittance to that program.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if someone like Sen. Hatch could be enticed into a new kind of program which would be so revolutionary as to cover everyone in America at tremendously lower costs while putting the health care & insurance industry back in a box (in terms of cost containment)?

Oh, goody……..I’m sure Sen. Hatch and his fellow Rethuglican committee members will be happy to surrender THEIR GOVERNMENT-RUN SENATE HEALTHCARE AND RETIREMENT PACKAGE FOR THE GOOD OF THE COUNTRY!!!!

GOPasaurs = a herd of GOPasauris, a gassy, egg bearing, dung eating reptile known for standing with its head up its ass.

GOPasaurs. Has a nice ring to it, doncha think?

Also (o/t) My hinky meter went up about ten miles when watching a piece about alternative energy in California and a huge project that got the green light, but commencement of the program has been deferred to 2012….hmm. time enough for it to get scuttled altogether later.