HealthBeat FYI: Giuliani Health Proposal Seeks Individual Coverage

June 08, 2007

Rudy Guiliani addressed health care in the Republican debate in New Hampshire, and now has outlined the plan in the Wall Street Journal.  He reportedly hopes to present it formally this summer. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118117722127727221.html

According to Harwood and Meckler's account, Guiliani's plan appears to promote several ideas developed by the NCPA: free markets for health care, tax credits for the purchase of private insurance plans, promotion of Health Savings Accounts and promoting a national marketplace for health insurance. Below are excerpts from the WSJ article, with links to corresponding NCPA publications:

In Mr. Giuliani's view, the U.S. health-care system's major problem is a lack of consumer choice. "It's your health; you should own your own insurance," he said in Tuesday's debate. "The reality is that we need a free market."

More important, Mr. Giuliani says, is to give consumers more choice. He would supplant state regulations, which require that insurance companies offer benefits ranging from chiropractic care to fertility treatments. Instead, people across the country could buy insurance from any company in any state, meaning they could find cheaper, more basic plans than those now available in their particular state.

Creating a Competitive Health Insurance Market: http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba558/

Many health policy experts say the individual market will only work well if Americans are forced to buy insurance, thus injecting into the system younger, healthier people who are now uninsured and balancing out sicker, more expensive patients. But Mr. Giuliani rejects a government mandate that all individuals purchase coverage.

Will Mandatory Health Insurance Work?: http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba569/

Not mentioned in the article, but brought up during the debate is tax credits for the purchase of health insurance.

Designing Ideal Health Insurance: http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/livesrisk_24.pdf

NCPA health care experts are available to further explain these revolutionary health care reforms.

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