There are a couple of obvious steps right off the top including tort reform and anti-trust.
This is an ares of future amendments to the bill. Estimated to save 1% of current costs with potentially high risk consequences, hence Obama has directed Sibelius to run trial cases.
One investment would be to support digitization and sharing of medical records. Should produce savings long term but is an up-front public cost.
In the current bill and funds in ARRA.
Insurance policies would be major medical and catastrophic.
Yep...in the current bill.
There would be low-cost mammograms, wound management, blood testing, vaccinations, whatever arenas business-oriented providers wanted to create. Doctor's orders wouldn't be required. (Some of that is going on now with blood testing.)
Good care for a public option. Without mandating low costs ala Medicare, you are dreaming.
And urgent-care or every-day other clinics. Charity services would be encouraged.
Yep...$$ in the current bill for this.
Employer-provided insurance would lose its tax advantage, at least for every-day coverage.
OK...so employers are already making threats about a provision in the current bill that takes away the tax status of the SUBSIDY they receive.
All policies other than employer-provided insurance would be individual, no family coverage.
I don't get the advantage of this one.
Government programs, Medicare and Medicaid, would continue. They would all be HMO type. They would be subject to best practices and effectiveness measures (rationing) as determined by experts and appropriately vetted. The insurance companies would likely go to school off this when setting their benefits.
Some of this survived in the bill (best practices), but it turned into an ugly rationing debate that turned into death panels...you know the rest and where it came from.
Seniors could opt out and cash out of Medicare and use the insurance market.
Yeah...good luck getting seniors to bite on this and insurance companies to take on the most expensive clients in the entire demographic spectrum....they cut you off today on the basis of precondition loopholes.
They would be covered in a government subsidized high risk pool until they age into Medicare. The transition public costs would diminish over several decades after which the program would be gone from the budget.
This describes the current bill more or less. Those who can't/don't get insurance join high risk state exchanges until Medicare ready...what's different in your proposal?
Much of what you want to do is already in the bill...it's not perfect, but it deploys gradually and it will be amended and improved over time. This is a hard topic. There are a million opinions for every provision/idea and 10000 lobbyists competing to shape the outcome. The problem with the critics is that they dismiss its complexity and become extreme and cynical. In the end, the responsibility for health care for Americans rests with Americans. If we all take a selfish attitude the result is what we have today.
Al |
