The HEAV Act- Part I - A Modest Proposal

Here's a little political thought experiment that will likely make me lose any conservative street cred that I have, if my last post didn't do it already.

The next Republican president puts forward a proposal to give every K-12 student a $2000 voucher to go to whatever school the student wants to go to on the condition that the school district that the student is in matches the voucher. If the kid goes to public schools, the system gets two grand from Uncle Sam, no strings attached. As part of the deal, No Child Left Behind and most other federal school regulations are scrapped. Special Ed and other high-degree-of-difficulty students will get higher voucher amounts to account for the lower teacher-student ratios in such programs.

That will put school districts $2K ahead for the kids they currently have and $2K in the hole for kids in private schools. $4k won't get you into BlueNose Academy, but it will get you into the local Catholic or evangelical school with a bit out of pocket.

Using my local schools as a guide, Blessed Sacrament charges $5000 for non-parisioners and Calvary Baptist charges $4600 for kids of non-members. The $4K voucher will cover the lion share of that, and many schools charging more than that might wind up "eating the co-pay" if they can make up the difference in donations.

After the NEA is done throwing a conniption fit, Senate Democrats make a counter-offer. We'll go with your voucher plan for K-12 if you make the Ryan-Wyden plan open to all citizens rather than just those on Medicare. Here's a write-up on the plan from last month

Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan on Thursday [12/15/11] plan to introduce a new Medicare reform plan that would allow seniors to choose between traditional Medicare and new private insurance programs.

The plan has some key differences from the Ryan blueprint that Republicans had rallied around earlier this year — and which Democrats had been united in pummelling in Congress and on the campaign trail as the beginning of the end of Medicare.

Dirty Harry and friends will push Obamacare under the bus if we make everyone eligible for Medicare and give them the option of taking a voucher for the average cost of coverage to an insurance company. If they already have a labor contract with qualifying coverage at work, they can cash in the voucher and keep their coverage. New labor contracts will see the voucher go to the employer if the employee wants the company health insurance.

The downside is that will cost money; the reason they needed the individual mandate is that didn't require shelling out cash for most folks and stuck the tab with businesses and the self-employed. We'll have the Cain Memorial VAT tax, a 9% tax on all purchases, with credit for VAT tax paid for supplies. The CBO has yet to score this bill, but they estimate that 9% should cover the cost of providing health care to all pre-seniors.

After Rand Paul gets done with some colorful verbiage and a 13-hour one-man filibuster, the Senate takes up consideration of the Health and Education Voucher Act

Assuming there isn't any killer details in the HEAV Act, would that be something that would make sense?