Submitted by Scott Baker, Jun 9, 2007 01:38

While it would be nice to think individual choice and the free market would drive down costs for consumers, the fact is, on eof the few ways consumers can save on health insurance is to participate in a group or employer plan where the costs are spread out among healthy people. Guiliani's proposal sounds like it would result in Insurance companies rushing to insure young healthy people, and insuring sick people only at exorbitent costs, if at all, even if those people are too sick to work and unable to afford health insurance. Then, you'll just be back to relying on the government to pay for your health care, this time in the form of paying your insurance premium. Of course, government programs being what they are, there would never be enough to pay for the premium and again people would go without care.

The other problem is that Guiliani's plan would only indirectly encourage preventitive measures so people don't get sick in the first place, presumably so they could pocket the remainder of the money in their tax-deductible health savings account, although that is not clearly spelled out in his plan either. If we don't do something to produce healthier Americans, no plan will work. The outlay will swamp anything taxpayers can afford.

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