Put the Patient in Charge

The truly effective way to lower health-care costs — and to increase fairness at the same time — is to allow all Americans to deduct their full health-care costs (not just their insurance costs) from both their income and payroll taxes, thereby leveling the playing field between those with employer-provided insurance (whose taxes wouldn’t change) and those who purchase insurance on the open market (who would no longer be the only ones taxed on income used to purchase health care).  Not only would this actually bring down health costs — while ObamaCare would raise them — without increasing the size or reach of the federal government — while ObamaCare would increase these dramatically — but it would foster adult self-reliance and self-respect, not childlike dependence encouraged by a paternalistic government.