Back to Basics | Fix Health Care Policy

The Scoop

August 31, 2009

Key Documents

Reforming American health care is an immense and complex undertaking. Heritages Dr. Stuart Butler writes:

If the U.S. health care sector were a separate national economy, it would be the sixth largest in the world–bigger that Britain’s entire economy. Imagine five bickering congressional committees trying to redesign the British economy successfully in just a few weeks.

Dr. Butler goes on to explain:
We must and can get health reform. But it will never be achieved if Americans are pressured to agree to Big Bang change on a ridiculously short timetable–and based on central planning, rather than on better incentives for American creativity and federalism.
Effective, bipartisan reform can be achieved if President Obama and Congress refocus discussion on three kinds of changes:
1. Promote State Innovation
2. Establish Fairness in the Tax Treatment of Health Insurance
3. Get Serious About Entitlement Reform

Tags: entitlement, health reform, state health reform, tax treatment