Easy Fix For Healthcare.Gov: Switch to Vouchers From Subsidies

The easier fix for the broken health insurance exchanges is to abandon them and HealthCare.Gov, and model the federal health insurance program after the federal housing voucher programs. In the subsidized federal housing voucher program, prospective tenants can use a housing voucher to pay part of their rent. The renters need not go to a "housing exchange" to find an apartment. Using this model, there is no need for an exchange since insurers already have exisitng websites; states have online lists of health insurers in their states, and websites like ehealthinsurance.com already exist and are well-functioning websites.

Subsidies and vouchers are identical in their effects in that they allow health insurance buyers and apartment renters to pay less than the full market price.

Allowing individuals to bypass Healthcare.Gov and the exchanges and deal directly with the insurance companies will remove many of the headaches and obstacles currently exisitng.

All that would be needed is a federal system that would allow individuals, families and insurers to see the amount of the federal subsidy/voucher. Once that amount is known, health insurance buyers could use the insurance infrastructure that existed before passage of Obamacare to buy health insurance.

It was foolish of Congress and the President to pass legislation that required building a new infrastructure for buying insurance. There was no need to build a complicated system that connects individuals and families to health insurers, to their subsidy amounts and that processes applications for insurance. The process for purchasing health insurance was in existence and functioning for years before the law. The US only needed to tell the parties how much it was willing to pay towards that individual/family insurance purchase.