Yesterday, I had the privilege of participating in the inaugural event for the American Enterprise Institute’s new “Beyond ‘Repeal and Replace’” initiative, the purpose of which is to explore policies that could take the place of the recently passed health care law. During the panel discussion, moderated by AEI’s Tom Miller, I provided an overview of the paper I coauthored with Tom called “The Defined Contribution Route to Health Care Choice and Competition.” The defined contribution approach to reform would convert today’s open-ended federal subsidies into fixed levels of support, and thus convert millions of passive insurance enrollees into cost-conscious consumers. A short summary of our paper can be accessed here, and the full paper is available here.
The panel also included Scott Harrington of the University of Pennsylvania, who presented an overview of his paper on “Regime Change for Health Insurance Regulation: Rethinking Rate Review, Medical Loss Ratios, and Informed Competition,” and Steve Parente of the University of Minnesota, who discussed his paper entitled “Harnessing Health Information in Real Time: Back to The Future for a More Practical and Effective Infrastructure.”
Video of the entire AEI event is available below: