We still have the difficulty of recission of policies and inability to get ANY insurance based on pre-existing conditions. I would adopt your proposals, plus make some kind of health insurance obligatory – like car insurance. In exchange for the increased pool, tighten regulations to make sure individual policy holders are treated like large employer plans right now (no exclusion for pre-exising, no recission, etc.). For the poor folks perhaps some kind of voucher program. This would give us the greatest freedom and the greatest choice without making the government the “sole purchaser” of health care (which is where these currently proposals will likely lead) with the power to manipulate every aspect of the market from wages to research dollars . . . and without granting said government the right to make life and death decisions over our lives. For when the market becomes schelerotic, how will you make a new deal with someone else?. This is our best chance to preserve a fairly free and independent market which is still capable of innovation, free choice and just compensation.
