Healthy ACA incentive

With ACA repeal-and-replace comatose, may I offer a possible prescription for resuscitating?

As with all insurance, solvency depends on low-risk individuals subscribing at rates sufficient to sustain high-risk users. Simply, the ACA failed in part because the low-risk young under-subscribed.

Proposal: The next financial bubble is student loan debt at $1.44 trillion with a three-year default rate of 11.3 percent. Waive a portion of individual student loan debt contingent on the debtor diverting those funds to purchase ACA insurance. Create incentive for private creditors to forgive partial debt allowing these creditors to receive a reduction in capital gains tax equal to the total student loan losses they accrue through the above proposal.

For government lenders, loss of revenue will be offset by increased ACA enrollments thereby reducing dependency on federal health care programs. For hospitals and clinics, ACA solvency will diminish its present losses accrued through treating the uninsured. Proposal will reduce rate of student loan defaults if presently debtors are paying for health care with more expensive insurers or out of pocket. And lenders must lower excessively usurious interest rates to approximately 4.5 percent.

Caveat: This proposal will demand policy pragmatism, a trait rather deficient in our infected body politic.

John B. Hagney

Spokane