Really "Fixing" Health Care Coverage Could Be the "New" New Hampshire Advantage - Granite Grok

Really “Fixing” Health Care Coverage Could Be the “New” New Hampshire Advantage

Healthcare costsIf you want to keep people off Medicaid, or food stamps, or welfare, you need to improve their employment prospects.   This works best with little or no public money or political interference.   Business flourishes in the sun, so the shadow of the bureaucracy must be as small as possible.

We also know that the more choices people have the better their odds of finding work, and if they lack skills more choices provide on the job training opportunities which also cost taxpayers nothing.

And fostering a labor marketplace that has more jobs than applicants increases starting wages across the board as businesses use wages, benefits, flexible hours, even day-care support and free training to attract employees.

This is all common sense and anyone who is even remotely serious about creating jobs, or helping American families, or lifting people out of subsistence or the dependency culture knows it.

Expanding the fossil fuel energy sector will create massive wage and economic growth, but not here in New Hampshire.  Instead, we have a different opportunity at our disposal–and it is staring us right in the face.

The current instability and unpredictability in the health care and health insurance markets are just screaming for a savior.  People are scared, upset, unsure.  The federal law changes weekly.  Insurance companies are trying to comply but the moving regulatory hoops are just making running their business more and more expensive–even before they sign up a customer.   ObamaCare has proven to be unworkable, intractable, expensive, and incapable of meeting even the simplest of its promises.  But this presents New Hampshire with an opportunity.  But it is an opportunity that will require Governor Hassan, and the State legislature to be bold an innovative.

Everyone else around us is trapped with what obviously isn’t going to work, so Fixing ‘health insurance’ for the Granite State is the next “New,” New Hampshire advantage.

Deregulate.  Open the market place up.  Invite insurance providers from all over the country, even the world, to register to do business in the state of New Hampshire.   Instead of forcing people to buy plans with features they do not need, allow insurance companies to compete with plans so customizable as to be nearly user specific.  Let your citizens use that competition to get the coverage they need at prices they are willing to pay, and reward them and the providers with a streamlined and responsive bureaucracy that makes doing business here a win for everyone.

New Hampshire’s health Care advantage would have significant benefits to the state.

A secure bipartisan commitment would send a strong signal to companies and investors that this is not something we will see overturned in the next legislature or under a different government.  If companies know they can come here and free themselves from the oppressive federal oversight and unpredictable mandates; if they know they or their employees can compete for benefit plans and coverage, reducing the cost of doing business, they will flock here in droves because those savings alone would offset any negative perceptions about our current business tax climate.

A ‘Gold Rush’ of new businesses and investment capital solves a lot of problems.

It adds jobs, reducing unemployment.  It increases wage competition–eliminating the need for the state to meddle in wage fixing schemes.  It brings money into the state with increases commerce and stimulates growth in every economic sector.  it reduces the need for food stamps, welfare, unemployment payments, and Medicaid or medicare funding and support.  It adds business tax revenue to the state coffers reliving pressure to raise any taxes while presenting the opportunity to reduce business taxes.  It provides external support for infrastructure improvements.

It attracts intellectual power, reduces or eliminates the brain drain issue, and could end the net migration of young people out of the state.

Opening up our health insurance marketplace makes New Hampshire the economic beacon of the Northeast and secures or cultural and fiscal future doe years to come.  But it only works if both parties agree to embrace it, and defend it, once it is in place.

If Democrats really give a damn about health care, and patient needs, and jobs, and wages, and women, they will drop their lock-step ideological attachment to the Democrat National Strategy and embrace real change for New Hampshire.

Obama Care was based on an idea it can never achieve at such great cost as to be destructive to our state, our nation, to those it claimed to want to help, and everyone else with them.  Continuing to defend it is to defend a plan that even Obama admits is so intractable he has to issue wavers and executive orders to keep it from immediate collapse.

Expanding Medicaid is the wrong direction.  Instead of stumbling into the constricting embrace of the Patient Affordable Care act and the limitations of one provider, fewer hospitals, cumbersome plans loaded with options people don;t want or need, with less incentives for doctors and care providers, why not invigorate health care in the Granite State.  Instead of following an idea that got trapped in an unworkable bottle, give the idea a new life.

You can stick with expanded Medicaid and the ACA , which will entrench a two-class system of health care where those who can afford it will pay for better care while those who can’t are trapped in the government care monopoly, or you can approach the problem in a way that will not just help people find and afford the care they need and want, but grow the State economy, increase tax revenue, add jobs and improve people’s lives.

Finally, for Republicans or anyone else who may already favor such a plan as this.  You need to embrace this idea now, explore it, promote it, and explain the wide range of benefits to more than just choosing an insurance policy.  This is the cure for what ails us, and regardless of party affiliation, anyone who is or has had to walk into the shadow of “government managed health care” will be ready to listen.  It is not anti-Obama or anti-Obama-Care, it is pro-healthcare.  It is pro-choice, pro jobs, pro-growth, pro-women, pro-stability and opportunity, it doesn’t  leave college kids on the fiscal hook for other people’s coverage, it doesn’t punish people for choosing plans and pricing they are comfortable with, Obama and the DHS wouldn’t be changing the rules or pulling the rug out from under insurers, business owners or policy holders at a moments notice, and it will provide more revenue to the state by attracting more insurers, and more employers–without expanding gambling, a passing a broad-based tax, or taxing marijuana, or having to accept strings and mandates from the so-called experts in DC.

It also invites the possibility of even less dependence on the debt-ridden federal government, which offers even more fiscal stability to residents of New Hampshire.

Anyone who really cares about the growth, health, and welfare of New Hampshire’s citizens, knows this is the answer.

So who has the courage?  Who has the courage to explore this, recommend it, run on it, and promote it–not for political gain or power, but becasue it can deliver real health care choices to the people of the Granite State.

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