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How Insurance Reform Can Affect Healthcare Premiums at Different Levels

Instead of focusing on a complete overhaul of the system we should start with comparatively slight changes could have major effects. One of these areas is insurance reform, which is a viable way to reduce premiums for middle-class earners. Having limited access to different options for private insurance results in certain earners being forced to pay higher premiums. These premiums are usually higher because they help subsidize care for other segments of the population who are in vulnerable positions or lower income brackets. Such groups might include low-income families, disabled people or retirees. If middle-class earners have access to other insurance markets including across state lines. In this way, they can avoid paying for the care of people in these demographics.

While there’s an argument to be made for lowering middle income premiums with insurance reform, such a solution raises fundamental questions.

This leaves the problem of how the people who rely on middle-income subsidies to fund their medical care would access adequate treatment. The answer is for individuals to manage their own healthcare through reasonable lifestyle choices and ensuring the incentives are structured right.

Unhealthy people are subsidized at the expense of the healthy. Imposing limitations for self-destructive personal choices will prevent people from putting too much strain on the healthcare system and free up resources for people who need them more urgently. This means actively using policy to raise the cost for smoking, obesity, and sedentary lifestyles.

We need to be cautious when allocating resources like current medical technology and procedures for terminal patients. People are living too long and healthcare costs are too high to handle all the catastrophic costs that terminal patients can run up. Instead of using resources on people who won’t live we can value human life most by respecting when it cannot reasonably be extended. Since most medical expenditures are incurred during the last six years of a person’s life this will free up significant amounts of capital, equipment, and time for people like transplant patients who need organs and will recover. We just cannot afford unlimited care for everyone in all circumstances.

A Time for Tough Choices?

These views are controversial but necessary to help Americans face the truths about healthcare. Some of the changes will be painful and unpopular but they are necessary for getting the situation under control.