More on abortion and health care

At Public Discourse, Jim Capretta shares his thoughts on Richard Stith's argument that adding the Hyde Amendment to the health care law may be better than repealing the law.

There are much better ways to address the genuine needs of the uninsured than what was passed. The fundamental problem in American health care is insufficient productivity by the health sector. The solution is not top-down micromanagement from Washington, D.C., but a functioning marketplace in which the government provides oversight but consumers and patients direct the allocation of resources. That can be done by converting today's federal support for insurance into support that the beneficiaries themselves direct and control. Indeed, a crucial reform would be to give all American households a fixed tax credit—about $6,000 per family—that must be used for the purchase of an insurance plan. This would take the place of today's tax preference for job-based plans and would guarantee insurance coverage to the entire U.S. population. It would do so in a way that then engendered the kind of dynamic response in the marketplace that could transform American medicine for the better. And it could be an absolutely pro-life step by inclusion of a clear prohibition against coverage of elective abortions in any plan purchased by the credit.

Richard Stith responds to Capretta's response.