The claim that a public option is needed to insure the poor is just false. Rationing is not inevitable. It is precisely the kind of perverse incentives caused by government meddling, (such as the lowered payments of Medicare, and the lack of tort reform) that have already caused many good physicians to leave the profession and have slowed entry into health care by others.

In a real market driven arena, in time, the number of health care providers would increase to the point that competition would kick in. As it is now, there is no competition except in the lucrative (non government controlled) areas such as cosmetic surgery.

A real conservative approach to reform would be to eliminate the stupid plethora of regulations on insurance by states and the Fed, then mandate that every provider has to have a very large pool basic catastrophic package. This would be a no frills package, but they could not say no to preexisting conditions. The companies would then be able to upsell some clients into better packages.

By combining forces in a way that is not currently allowed by many state laws the insurance companies would have larger pools of clients and costs would go down. This could be combined with tax rebates for personal insurance costs and portability.

Then, for the very poor, the government could just pay their premiums for them. That would still be a hell of a lot cheaper than what is being considered now.

In fact, Chief Justice Marshall had established the following case precedent, now wrongly ignored, which appropriately limits the power of the feds to lay taxes.

“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” –Chief Justice Marshall, GIBBONS V. OGDEN (1824) http://supreme.justia.com/us/22/1/case.html

So not only was misguided Obama’s Stimulus Package and proposed healthcare constitutionally unauthorized, but the corrupt feds never had the power to lay taxes to fund such programs in the first place.

What’s going on is that state sovereignty-ignorant voters have been electing lawmakers to both the state legislatures and the federal senate who are as state sovereignty-impaired as the voters are. Consequently, these lawmakers have not been doing their jobs to protect state sovereignty by protecting citizens from the power-hungry, tax-loving, Constitution-ignoring “leaders” running the federal government.

Finally, the following link should give people an idea as to how Constitution-ignorant voters have shot themselves in the foot with big, corrupt federal government.

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=199792

Depending on the area local government regulation adds up to 30% to the cost of a home. Apply for a mortgage and you will sign probably five times as many disclosures as you will for surgery.