This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, July 15, 2009. I'm Caleb Brown.

Much of the focus regarding President Obama's designs for a government-run health plan have been to point

out its flaws rather than to offer alternatives based on true choice and competition.

Cato Institute Senior Fellow Mike Tanner has just such a plan.

First, law of health care should be from the Hippocratic Oath.

First, do no harm. But often that leaves us with sort of a false, such a both Either we reform health care the way he wants us to or we do nothing.

Now of course given how bad his plan is doing nothing might be exactly what you want to do.

But that's not the choice we face.

There are free market alternatives out there.

There are ways that we can build on the uniquely American options of choice,

competition, individual freedom that will bring down health care costs, expand access to care, and improve quality.

For example, we have long suggested that we need to move away from an employer-provided

insurance system to one in which individuals have personal and

of the portable health insurance.

And of course, if you have an employer-provided insurance

when you lose your job, you lose your health insurance.

All that stems from a misallocation of the tax code that

subsidizes employer-provided insurance but penalizes you for getting insurance on

your own. We need to change that tax law so that

individuals can get the same tax break for buying their own health insurance

that they get now for employer-provided insurance. What about on the provider side, those who provide and deliver most of the health care services

that we get in the United States?

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