Okay. Occam's Razor is a cool tool. Essentially, it allows you to cut through layers of bullshit to the core of an issue. Essentially, it carves off unnecessary externalities and posits that the simplest sufficient solution to a given problem is the best and also probably the closest to the truth.

This morning I'm thinking about Occam's Razor and health care because the House passed their health care reform bill late last night. Their version of reform involves many new layers of complexity—not to mention tax—to a problem that seems to have a simple solution.

I haven't had health insurance in over two years. Totally eep!, right? Except, like, not really. I'm young and healthy. I take care of myself. If I was hit by a car, yes, that would suck. Like, mad type suck. But when you walk the rope without a net you focus on your balance. I could afford health insurance but I've been choosing not to. And if you value personal liberty, even if you disagree with my choice, you value my ability to have that choice.

My employer offers a health plan but I haven't taken it, mostly because employer-sponsored health care seemed like a bad idea, even though at the time I didn't consider why. But now I am and I still think it's a bad idea. Especially if you work for a small company or if you want to consider yourself in any sense mobile. Employer-sponsored health care ties you to that employer. And costs are all out of whack. Costs are rising and my company's coverage policy is changing. Mostly out of curiosity I compared my employer's cost for covering me to my own cost for a private plan with Kaiser Permanente. I would pay something like three times less for a pretty great private plan than my employer pays for what seems like a pretty paltry group plan.

Relating this to Occam's Razor, employer-sponsored health care is a bad idea because it layers on the bullshit. It ties you to your employer, thereby limiting your freedom and mobility, and it costs you (if you are like me) more than a private plan. A plan with Kaiser Permanente would allow me to switch employers as often as I want and would also remove all intermediaries between me and the people I would pay to fix me if I break. And because my boss didn't have to pay unnecessarily high costs to provide my health coverage, he could in theory pay me more. It's a win for everybody. It's the simplest and the best solution.

The House's health care bill is the opposite.

The fact is that the health care market is already heavily regulated. It is not a free market. We as consumers of health insurance are not benefitting from the effects of competition because there is no real competition because the market is not open. And now the government wants to reduce competition even more. In effect, they want to eliminate competition. They want to mandate a monopoly. And they want to eliminate personal liberty:

"H.R. 3962 provides that an individual (or a husband and wife in the case of a joint return) who does not, at any time during the taxable year, maintain acceptable health insurance coverage for himself or herself and each of his or her qualifying children is subject to an additional tax."

And:

"Section 7203—misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year."

If this law were already in effect, I would have been fined and potentially arrested when I quit my last job because I wanted to freelance and travel. I was poor, I slept on floors, I ate nothing but rice and beans for weeks, and I had never before been more in love with life. If this law were already in effect, I wouldn't have been able to quit the job I hated. I wouldn't have been able to commit a summer to writing code and traveling to France. I wouldn't have been able to explore the United States by bus and decide which city I loved the best and then move there with nothing but the last of my savings and a laptop and the determination to make my life there. My life would be completely different. For the worse. This law would have stripped me of my right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Pretty cool, right?

The health care industry absolutely needs reform but the government is the wrong agent to carry out that reform. The simplest and smartest solution to the problem would be to remove the restrictions on the market, to make it really free and to allow us to benefit from the effects of real competition. The market for health insurance should look more like the market for car insurance, not more like the government.