The poor could obtain private health insurance with explicit federal subsidies. A wider range of options for health insurance would be available in a market catering to individual, rather than corporate choice. Health insurance would more likely be purchased as true insurance to protect against catastrophic loss, reducing paperwork to process hundreds of millions of small bills. Insurance would be more affordable and flexible, and many more people could afford coverage. These changes would increase the affordability of health care without triggering the job losses and wage reductions that would result from employer mandates.
Critics argue that health care decisions are too complex for the average consumer.
But Americans somehow manage to buy houses, automobiles, computers, legal services, and other forms of insurance by education themselves about their options. Each of the three main market-oriented think tanks in Washington is pursuing its own politically bold but economically sound health care ideas. But after a group of conservative senators, including Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Robert Bennett of Utah, called upon the think tanks to focus on what they held in common, health policy experts Robert Helms of the American Enterprise Institute, Robert Moffit of the Heritage Foundation, and Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute took up the challenge. This Consensus Group quickly determined that tax reform was the center of each of their market-oriented approaches. Around this core idea they have developed a broader conceptual approach to health care reform.