The Republican alternative to Obama-care should be deregulating the health insurance market by legalizing interstate health insurance, ending mandates so a bare-bones health insurance could be affordable, and allowing health savings accounts.

Medicare is the wrong model for reform. It’s going bankrupt ($36 billion behind) and there’s millions in fraud. There’s always more fraud and waste in government-run enterprises than in private enterprises. Plus, the government as the middleman, and its cut (it taxes from the people, then processes the money, then gives it back to the people), is eliminated when the private sector does it. In this way, the private sector always gets more bang for the buck.

Government plans, in anything, lead to elitism, where the wealthy and politically well-connected cut to the front of the line, and a two-tiered system evolves.

Managed, corporatized care is what we have now. That’s the problem. Say no to HMO’s and Obama-care. HMO’s started with the HMO Act of 1972. But they’re corporate, managed care, which is also the wrong model. We don’t want to go from corporate medicine to socialized medicine.

Socialized medicine has failed everywhere it’s been tried from Canada to Britain. How many Americans go to Canada for health care? Yet tons of Canadians come here for health care. Where do you go if you want the best and the brightest in medicine? America.

We should say “yes” to privatized health care where we reduce insurance companies’, employers’ and governments’ intervention between the doctor & patient. Ideally, the patient should pay the doctor directly, rather than a 3rd party. When a 3rd party pays, producers always charge the maximum. It’s like corporate credit cards. When you go out to dinner on one of these, you max out buying the best steaks on the menu.

Liberals like to brag about Medicare, but its a 1930’s idea that should be discarded. That way America’s health care can stay the envy of the world. Health care in America doesn’t need a government option or a single payer system a la Canada, we need price consciousness, price fluctuation and price communication, otherwise known as a free market.

A government takeover just insures that everyone get’s care, but poor care, rather than a vast majority getting extra care. I don’t want a Federal Government Healthcare Rationing Board, do you?

Jeff E. Jared is a Kirkland resident and attorney.