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By Knight Kiplinger

The Kiplinger Washington Editors

July 2, 2009

By year-end or so, Congress will give the nod to a major rewriting of the nation's financial regulatory system. This week’s Kiplinger Letter explores whether the package will do more harm than good and what lawmakers are likely to include.

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I just attended a franchise seminar. The speaker represents a few hundred franchises that (he says) are hand picked. He has the prospect (aka victim?) answer some questions about themselves then he makes recomendations - based on your personality, capital situation, etc.. If you pick a franchise, then he does some due dilligence for you. If you both decide it's a good idea, he helps you get started. He says he offers this service free of charge, which means he gets a commission if he's able to sell you a franchise. Has anyone done this? Successfully? Unsuccessfully?

-- fender

Can the Free Market Salvage the Health Care System?

Sorting out different health care proposals is tough and confusing. Here's a primer on leading market-based solutions.

Worth Reading: The Quick Take from Kiplinger

February 2008

Grace-Marie Turner

Galen Institute

Grace-Marie Turner is president of the Galen Institute, a public policy research organization she founded in 1995 to promote free-market ideas for the health care system. She was a member of the National Advisory Council of Healthcare Research and Quality.

Despite reluctance and confusion by employees, consumer-driven health care is widely regarded as the best option employers have for reining in health care costs for both themselves and their workers. Would that approach, along with other free market solutions, work on a national scale and create a system that could provide universal coverage at an affordable price?

Certainly, argues Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, a public policy research organization that advocates for a market-based health care system. By marrying tax breaks and subsidies to competition and the marketplace, the government can ensure coverage to all in a way that gives more choice and more control to consumers.

Whether a health system opened to market forces is the ultimate solution to health care is a matter of huge debate and will be a central issue in the presidential campaign. But using market forces in one way or another is a crucial element of every major health care proposal. Turner uses a question and answer format to explain how the market can bring order and fairness to the health system that she believes regulation has failed to deliver. She explains concepts such as consumer-driven health care and high-deductible insurance plans and sizes up one of the leading reform proposals that requires all Americans to have health insurance. "When political leaders pass a law requiring everyone to have health insurance, government authorities must decide what qualifies as acceptable coverage," she writes. "The insurance market quickly morphs into a government-regulated utility."

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POSTED BY: JeffG (February 27, 2008 12:21 PM)
Affordable health care is a right of all citizens and should be provided by the government. What if we had free market police and fire protection? What about free market roads and libraries? Health care should be on the same level as these services, social security and medicare. The problem as I see it is that the health care and insurance industries are too much in the pockets of the politicians.

POSTED BY: tjdepere (February 27, 2008 02:22 PM)
Health care as discussed by the article and the politicians is not health care. The individual has physical, dental and emotional needs. No one is discussing total health care. All that is being discussed is one third of the individuals' needs. Again, this article and the politicians are deceiving us.

POSTED BY: RR (February 27, 2008 06:44 PM)
As a physician who actually works in the health care "trenches", I can tell you this article is mostly nonsense created in a cubicle. Health care costs a lot of money because there is an incredible amount of disease present in an ever enlarging population base. As an example, the AMA and the government have spent the better part of 40 years and millions of dollars trying to prevent disease associated with smoking cigarettes. After 40+ years of intense efforts cancer and heart disease associated with smoking not only exists, it is still commonplace. What sounds good on paper is often much different in the real world.

POSTED BY: XNYKR35 (February 27, 2008 07:19 PM)
Everyone wants health care to be a right of passage but nobody wants to accept the reality of paying for it. Why do most people without coverage smoke, drink, drive and own flat screen TV's? We currently lack the ability to enforce the public to have auto insurance.

POSTED BY: Bane Tyler (February 27, 2008 08:42 PM)
No one is entitled to health care-the constitution does not provide for it! It is time to develop a combined plan as described in this article-not universal health care. As for the 47 million uninsured-20 million are illegal Aliens. They should not be included.

POSTED BY: Robert (February 27, 2008 10:10 PM)
Health care is NOT a right. Social Security is NOT a right. They are both services, just like any other service. The only rights guaranteed by the Constitution are to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". Get an education, for crying out loud. History is littered with failed nation states that employed Marxist/Socialist policies. There is no free lunch! Do you really want to put your fate in the hands of a bunch of government pogues? Thanks, but no thanks. And do you really think a privately-funded library isn't practical or feasible? Good Lord..a high school student could pull that off.

POSTED BY: Tony (March 04, 2008 09:39 PM)
The basic flaw of every "market-based" plan I've seen is that the very nature of health insurance defies consumer sovereignty; if a peanut-butter manufacturer lowers quality to increase profits, you can switch to another brand easily. Peanut butter is cheap, you can buy all the brands to make your own mind up. Cars are big and expensive; since long-term durability is beyond the scope of a 20-minute test drive, you have to look at the maker's reputation. But if THEY cheapen the product, that doesn't affect the car you bought from them four years ago- it's built to the old, higher standards. If your health insurance company- which you had to go with solely on reputation and previous performance, there being no tangible product to inspect- cuts quality to maximize profits several years in, and you develop a major illness, you get treated to the new, lower standard. By the time you find out the product is defective, it's too late to take your business elsewhere.

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