Should have been done years ago. First you have to repeal McCarran-Ferguson though. And that's not going to happen.
Although you can introduce competition in health insurance, in theory anyway, doing so would make selection of an insurer no easier and wouldn't save you a dime. For one thing consider that the Sherman anti Trust law isn't enforced by Republican or Democratic administrations anymore. There would soon enough be only thee or four insurance companies to choose from, as all the smaller companies would be bought by the larger companies. Consider now how you choose a cable provider, you choose the company you dislike the least. Cable companies all offer exactly the same thing at prices that differ by pennies at most, but they all advertise greatly different prices!!! It's called gotcha with the fine print.
Then of course competition among actual medical care providers is nearly impossible to obtain completely because in so many situations the buyer can't walk. The parts of medicine that can be opened to competition can't be without deregulation, and deregulation can't happen without some increase in risk. And risk, like any safety issue, no politician can afford to be on the wrong side of. If you want to pass any Bill in Congress, all you have to do is find a way to tie it to safety. Then you say "but that would be unsafe". That word "unsafe" is a magic word! It works the same way the word "communist" worked in the 50s and 60s to get whatever you want. And that word, it still has a little cachet to this day, for example, "North Korea. COMMUNIST!"
Then on top of those problems, if you attempted to deregulate you'd be fighting everyone that is now feeding at the regulatory trough. Which is virtually everyone in the medical care industry. The hardest thing in the world is to pull pigs away from a trough!
These are all reasons why we won't do anything to bring down medical costs until Senators can't afford medical care for their own families. At that point we will go to single payer. That should be sometime before the millennium is out.
Good luck with your plans to introduce competition into the health insurance industry. I wish you all the best!
