Let's let the millionaires decide

Obama is trying to sell us a well-worn used car. Something beat up and retro-fashionable like a 1987 Cutlass. But instead of spray new-car smell, it smells more like class warfare. Obama wants us to believe that our wealthy can fully fund his socialized medicine scheme. Just raise their taxes enough, and it's all taken care of. Don't bet on it. Or maybe we should.

Maybe we should call his bluff. I propose a Millionaire Conventiontm. Let's get the country's wealthy together — a country club constitutional convention. Include anyone with over a million dollars in net assets and/or $350,000 in annual income. Let's give them a choice: vote to approve A) Obama's plan, and let the government tax you at whatever realistic rate will actually accomplish Obama's goal of funding health care reform — certainly more than Obama is telling them now, or B) give them the choice of donating money (with future pledges for ongoing funding) to establish a private, nonprofit health insurance company to solely provide market health insurance coverage to any client on a sliding scale. To sweeten the pot, let's toss in very generous tax deductions for their contribution, and a nice crystal wall plaque.

I understand there would have to be some rules. For instance, we'd have to allocate votes — say every individual in the wealthy family would get a vote. We'll give Bill Gates family a 4x multiplier just to be gracious. And we'd have to set up some laws governing the new nonprofit to ensure that the coverage it's providing is truly competitive, and that it is answerable to a board made up of its primary benefactors (sprinkle in a few politicians). The new nonprofit will be allowed to tap the public's largess through ongoing fundraising, and will be judged by future donors based on its effectiveness, efficiency and charity.

You'd never have to worry about competition. The for-profit insurance companies will compete at the margin for entry-level insured. And the increase in low-income patients with paying insurance will reduce costs across the board. It may even lighten the Medicaid roles.

It's a plan so crazy it just might work! At the very least, imagine getting a chance to see just how philanthropic George Soros really is when he's playing with his own money.