It’s easy to see the challenge of real reform: To actually bring down costs, legislators must roll back regulations to allow market innovation outside the insurance company model.
In some places, doctors are already trying their hand at practices similar to prepaid physician groups, as in concierge medicine experiments like the Atlas MD plan, a physician cooperative in Wichita, Kan. These plans must be able to skirt state insurance regulations and other laws, such as those prohibiting physicians from owning their own diagnostic facilities.
Both Democrats and Republicans could learn from this lost history of health care innovation.