Dismantle regulatory boards established to monitor and enforce the currently enacted reforms. Abolish pure community rating. This premium pricing structure drives up the price of health insurance to prohibitive levels, forcing healthy consumers out of the market and increasing the number of uninsured. Stop expanding benefit mandates. Consumers are denied the choice of health plans best suited to their needs when mandates force plans to provide an array of benefits designed more to please lobbyists than to satisfy consumers.
Mandates also drive up health care costs, making insurance more costly for individuals and families.
Promote experimentation of coverage for the uninsurable. Utilize demonstration projects at the state level to focus on desired goals and to minimize unintended consequences before implementing full-scale changes. The results examined in this study show that regulation at the state and federal levels is counterproductive in responding to the challenge of increasing access to health insurance in the individual and private health insurance market. A far better approach is to empower individuals and families to make health care choices that suit their own needs, restore the independence and integrity of the medical profession, and force insurance companies to compete for consumers' dollars. The authors are grateful to Robert E. Moffit, Director of Domestic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation, and Carrie J. Gavora, Health Care Policy Analyst at The Heritage Foundation.