Remember those good old days before ObamaCare? Remember when a lot of people, yours truly included, bought plans to protect us from major expenses, not routine trips to the doctor? At one point, we had a high-deductible family plan where we paid minor stuff out of pocket but had coverage for the big stuff. It was effective, reasonably priced and the whole system worked a lot better.

Maybe we should offer that option again, as explained by Stephen Moore:

One reason health care costs are rising at two to three times the cost of everything else is that the entire insurance market is dysfunctional. Most Americans pay high monthly premiums (or the government pays for them) for coverage they often don't use.

In 2024, 11.7 million people, more than one-third of those covered by Obamacare, had no medical claims. They, or taxpayers, paid a lot in premiums -- for nothing.

But the whole idea of insurance is to protect your family from major expenses -- not minor ones. That's why we have fire insurance on our homes -- to protect against the risk of the total loss of your property.

We need a system much more sensible and less costly for patients and taxpayers. We should be encouraging insurance plans with low premiums that cover major "catastrophic" medical expenses but leave smaller expenses -- like checkups or minor surgery -- to be paid by policyholders directly.

Such policies -- known as catastrophic health insurance plans -- have been available for several decades. Most of us would be better off financially if we signed up for these plans. With low premiums and coverage for major medical expenses, they are a win-win for families.

Makes sense -- so why did we get away from that? Well, that was the question I was asking back in 2009-10 when ObamaCare was debated. Common sense left the room when that so-called Affordable Care Act was signed into law. The result is this mess that we have now.

I hope that President Trump and the GOP will present an alternative to ObamaCare that brings back choices in health care. There were some good ideas in the "Beautiful Bill" such as health savings accounts. Another idea is to let individual states run their own programs, a far more accountable idea to the voters in their districts.

I don't care what they call it as long as we have choices and really is affordable.

P.S. Check out my blog for posts, podcasts and videos.

Image: US Government