Writing for NRO, Manhattan Institute Center for Medical Progress director Paul Howard delivers a four-point plan to "unleash a new wave of entrepreneurial energy" and put American health care on a rapid road to recovery.

1. PLAY FAIR IN HEALTH CARE: The tax penalty against individually purchased health insurance (30 percent or more, depending on income) is regressive and unfair. A tax deduction or tax credit for everyone who purchases their own health plans would be much more equitable, giving millions of uninsured access to insurance. A risk-adjusted voucher for our poorest, sickest patients (think cancer) would allow them to buy into insurance markets and encourage insurers to seek them out.
2. ONE NATION, ONE MARKET: It's time America became one market when it comes to health insurance - allowing consumers to buy insurance from across state lines. Freed from expensive state mandates, insurance would become more affordable, consumers would have more choices, and companies could target marketing efforts at the uninsured, newly empowered with tax-advantaged dollars.
3. STOP BEING PART OF THE PROBLEM: Retail clinics prove that high-quality care can be delivered by skilled nurse practitioners in non-traditional environments - but some states, like New York, prohibit the "corporate practice of medicine" (which limits the ability of for-profit companies to employ health care professionals) or try to slap retail clinics with restrictive regulations that drive up costs. State "certificate of need" laws also prohibit competitors from challenging local hospital monopolies with higher quality or more affordable services. Rather than stifling innovation and competition to protect existing providers (like nonprofit hospitals), policymakers should throw out their old assumptions and find new ways to encourage choice and competition in health-care markets.
4. THE FEDS NEED TO LEAD BY EXAMPLE: Government spending on health care, particularly for Medicare, is out of control and unsustainable...If Congress is serious about lowering health-care costs and sustaining Medicare for the long haul, it will have to embrace competition and choice throughout the program.

The best medicine for health care, writes Howard, isn't, as many argue, to treat it entirely different from every other sector of the economy and have government ration, micromanage, mandate and centrally plan.

Rather, the prudent and genuinely American course is to encourage the same type of "competition (that) drives entrepreneurs to offer a wide range of affordable products and services to consumers - like $300 laptops, cut-rate vacation packages sold online, and discount brokerage firms."

"This is the formula that explains America's leadership of the global economy - and it's a long overdue prescription for health-care reform," says Howard.