Well it means that you hunt for mods instead of gear and that's really equivalent, with the exception that professions that craft gear and not endgame mods are shafted. So I understand the problem but I think your solution is incorrect.
I would much prefer they stick with the current mod system, which IMO works fantastically, and allow crafters that make armor to craft viable modifications or something similar. Perhaps alter the relationship between cybertech, armormech and synthweave. Right now they all sort of fall flat because cybertech doesn't scale to the 50+ rating area and armormech and synthweave generate unmoddable and mostly inferior gear. That's what needs to be fixed, not the mod system itself imo.