Why not - Everyone else has a fix.  Only difference is, this one works - but it won't make everyone happy.

A major problem with Health Care, as it now functions is that we already have a Public Health Care system, we just refuse to define it and deal with it as such.  Consequently the costs of Publicly funded health costs are spread among insurers, taxpayers, and direct payers in a rather arbitrary manner.  This process only succeeds in making everyone feel cheated - and probably everyone is cheated.  That is except the recipient of Public Health Care.

Our current public system is based around the EMTALA act of 1986.  In short, "The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (42 U.S.C. § 1395dd, EMTALA) is a United States Act of Congress passed in 1986 as part of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. It requires hospitals and ambulance services to provide care to anyone needing emergency treatment regardless of citizenship, legal status or ability to pay. There are no reimbursement provisions." (Source Wikipedia)

Among the basic problems with the act, is that it didn't clearly define "emergency" and it made no provision for how such treatment would be paid.  Consequently, most hospitals have defined "emergency" as anyone who visits the emergency room.  Over the past 23 years this has evolved to mean everything from auto wreck trauma, to children with sniffles. Because no specific formula for payment has ever been established, most hospitals have kludged together some arbitrary method which combines; the submitting request for indigent care treatment to city, county, and state governments, inflating the charges to paying users, and attempting to limit payments to caretakers as well as absorbing some level of indigent care cost.  Because of this haphazard cost distribution, it is not unreasonable to say that no one really knows what this policy really costs.

Another aspect of this quasi-public funding program is that it has place an upward pressure on overall prices due to the economic realities of absorbing scarce medical resources and the presence of public funding.  The existence of this system cannot be underestimated in it's role in the dramatic upward spiral of health care costs. Combined with a runaway "jackpot justice" system which also burdens health care providers with extraordinary liability to accompany the obligation to provide "emergency treatment" the recipe for a "health care crisis" is almost complete. 

The solution to this self imposed crisis is simple. Define EMERGENCY, and limit care accordingly.

Of course, this would require legislators to make hard decisions - and actually DENY something from the public coffers rather than give it away.  This is not as difficult as it sounds.  For years insurance carriers have established "defined benefits" where they have clearly enumerated virtually every known medical procedure.  Each governing jurisdiction needs to get a copy of such a "defined benefit" list, and start identifying what procedures will qualify for "emergency" treatment. 

Some decisions about "emergency" are clear.  Setting broken bones from an auto accident - for example.  That's clearly an emergency.  What about follow up care ?  Not so clear.  Either way, it simply has to be decided, defined, and then funded.  This is not rocket science.  Every public hospital can make a reasonable estimation of how many of each emergency procedures will perform per year.  Accordingly, it can estimate the cost of such procedure - and apply for city, county, state, or federal funding for such costs.  If these "public benefits" were clearly defined, private insurance could be tailored to provide the necessary care over and above the known and limited "public" care.  This way, everyone only pays once.

That is, the "public" would pay for only very limited and defined emergency care.  Every citizen would then be knowingly funding such defined care through an identifiable public budget line item.  Defined care could be expanded or contracted based on public input and available funds.  Accordingly, insurance providers (in a competitive environment) would lower their premiums to account for public care that they would not have to cover.

This would require State and Federal Insurance "mandates" to be eliminated.  Mandates are laws which require individuals to buy, and insurers to provide coverage for ailments that the neither party may want to cover - but the Government "mandates" they be included.  If there is any possibility of reversing the upward trend in medical premium coverage - it is vital that "mandates" be reduced if not completely eliminated.

This would allow for a much greater consumer choice in insurance products.  Healthy young people could buy a policy that only covers major medical, and chose to simply pay for any "cold / flu " treatment out of pocket.  Such policies would probably be both inexpensive for the consumer and profitable for the provider. 

Couple these changes with the support of Health Savings Accounts where individuals could save for and pay insurance premiums with tax exempt income - and suddenly "Health Care" is not such a hopeless proposition.

This isn't really such a radical proposal.  Consider the property insurance analogy.  Virtually every property owner carries some level of fire/casualty policy on their property.  Yet, almost none of them include covering the cost of local  fire protection.  The cost of maintaining fire trucks, fire stations, and paying fire fighters and EMS are almost always public expenditures.  Not so amazingly, if one resides in an area with highly regarded fire and ems services, they fire hazard policy rates are generally lower than if one resides in an area served by a poorly funded volunteer fire service.  The public portion of fire protection is clear and defined.  They put out the fire, the home owner has to deal with repair of the damage. A similar relationship exists for police protection.  The public police force will investigate crimes against private property, but the owner pays for security systems, theft insurance, and of course a couple of decent hand guns to protect private property.

The template where there is a defined public "nugget" of service, and an unlimited availability of private supplemental service is proven.  It works well in police, fire, ems, and even transportation (think public roads - private vehicles).  There is no reason that it can't work in health care.

Such a health care structure would return some level of consumer choice to medical costs, continue to allocate scarce resources according to monetary value, and begin to return some sanity in our health care system.  Most importantly, it would tend to strengthen the private sector system - and help stem the current tide toward Government control that is slouching ever closer and closer to a totalitarian tyranny.