Ryan's healthcare bill is a non starter for me--nothing to really change cost

It does very little to change the underlying cost of healthcare.

I don't like medicaid but the people that are on it can't buy insurance the way we price healthcare now.

We have single payer in medicare. It is the main reason healthcare cost have expanded far faster than inflation for more than two decades now. We have to end the practice of the government being a direct buyer of health care services. That power creates the bribes from lobbyists for the providers that raise all our cost.

We should change medicare to a voucher based plan that will pay for subscriptions to health providers. Instead of having the government pay providers directly, medicare recipients would get voucher to use to pay for subscriptions to health service providers. This pricing model is beginning to pop up in a few places across the country. For example, for general physician care you might pay your doctor $100 a month and he in turns sees you when you need to be seen. For hospital care you would pay the hospital of our choice $100 a month and if you ever needed hospitalization they would admit you and so on.

Such a change would have a dramatic impact in how we pay for healthcare and how we shop for healthcare. The biggest impact would be that the government would no longer be buying healthcare direct from big money providers. (Here is one example of a subscription based doctor service LINK )

We would thank the republicans 10 years from now for doing this.

One thing the democrats should like about such a pricing system is that it makes it easy to define medicaid cost (assuming we move medicaid to the same system) and coverage. If in Louisiana doctor office subscriptions are available for a family of 4 for $200 a month we can decide how of that $200 the poor should pay and how much we will subsidize them to buy that care.

Now is not the time to be timid. We don't need ObamaCare light. The entire nation expects a change---go for it. Go big or go home.