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The Heritage Foundation released an article this week regarding individual health insurance that suggests a more portable health care system that wouldn't leave people uninsured when they move, switch jobs, or try to get off subsidized health care.

The plan would need some major changes to make it possible: like employer sponsored coverage, individual health insurance would need to be partially subsidized through tax breaks. Plans would need to be flexible enough to move from state to state, and affordable enough for people to purchase. And, it would need to be made easier to move away from public assisted health care to private coverage.

The goal is for American citizens to own their own individual health insurance policies, much as they own other insurance policies today. It would also minimize the unstable phenomenon known as "churning," where people repeatedly gain and lose their health insurance, resulting in frequent spells of uninsur­ance.

In fact, 89.5 million people were uninsured for at least one month during 2005 and 2006, which is a lot more than is reflected in the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey estimate of 47 million.

Much of these suggestions for individual health insurance have been made by upcoming presidential nominees, especially the notion of price controls and tax breaks. Whether such a plan could work remains to be seen, but the truth is that while "churning" is a dangerous phenomenon, the issue of being chronically uninsured for those 47 million is even worse.