Your editorial "GOPCare" (June 16) rightly expresses frustration at Republican politicians' inability to frame a coherent alternative to ObamaCare for the private insurance market. In light of Rep. Paul Ryan's impressively bold proposals to reform Medicare, this is disappointing. It is also curious. 

Mr. Ryan took significant political risk with his Medicare proposal. Republican politicians fear greater risk in fixing private insurance by eliminating the discrimination in the tax code that gives our employers' monopoly control over our health dollars (which you have previously condemned as U.S. health care's original sin). Because of this discrimination, over $10,000 annually are diverted from each family's paycheck into our employers' human-resource bureaucracies to choose prepaid health care.

Any politician who proposed solving the housing crisis by replacing the mortgage-interest tax deduction with employer-based, tax-exempt housing would be laughed off the stage. Who could tolerate having to move house every time we switched jobs, or even next January if the human resources director decided on a new housing plan for all employees when the contract comes up for renewal? But the government forces this on us for health care and we call it a "benefit."

Eliminating this tax discrimination so that everyone can choose the health plan that works for his family would immediately solve the problems of portability and pre-existing conditions. By the stroke of a pen, it would also result in a raise of $10,000—tax exempt—for the average American family. Why Republican politicians believe that such a reform carries unbearable political risk is a mystery for the ages.

Source:  http://online.wsj.com/article/
SB10001424052702303703004577474683879849916.html?mod=
WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLEThirdBucket