Consumer Reports Regarding Health Care Reform

Hey, the folks at Consumer Reports/Consumers Union are the real deal regarding health care reform, they've been on it for years. (Disclaimer, I'm on their board.)

Here's some hard truth from 'em:

• U.S. health-care spending limits our ability to compete in global markets and consumes an ever larger chunk of workers' pay. Address cost by creating incentives for prevention and early detection, reducing expensive and harmful errors, improving information systems and eliminating unnecessary and potentially harmful treatments.
• Any reform bill must preserve current coverage options for people who are satisfied with them.
• For everyone else, we need new options with benefits equivalent to those Congress enjoys including a public option that will compete with private health insurance and pressure companies to improve.
• Finally, reform must restructure the health insurance market by requiring insurers to offer products from among a set of standard benefit packages, requiring them to accept anyone who applies regardless of their health status, and requiring everyone to purchase coverage with adequate subsidies for those who need them.

You can also read how they're countering some untruths from bad guys regarding health care reform.

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Comments

[Billl]

Here is the best program for individuals, businesses, taxpayers, and our national economey and nobody talks about it.

Free public health care and medications for everyone wanting it and this dual choice public/private system will save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

Businesses that choose public care for their employees would have no financial obligations or any other responsibilities concerning health care.

If you like private care, keep it, no change.

Ask the President and your representative’s to include this dual public/private option in the health care reform discussion.

The cheapest way to collect money to pay for health care is through a national sales tax, and not by forcing people and companies to purchase questionable insurance to pay excessive costs for services in a failed system.

50 million uninsured people along with everyone else, who wanted to drop private care and receive free public care and medications, including seniors on Medicare, could do so and the annual costs would still be hundreds of billions of dollars less than the $2.5 trillion spent last year.

[cktirumalai]

"Incentives for prevention" are a great money-saver. And since physicians can't do much without the active cooperation of their patients, creating an atmosphere in which people try hard to stay well is important. We all know that physical activity and a sensible diet are good but many of us manage to evade them. What if doctors become so successful at keeping us well that it reduces their income? Well, there is nothing sinful about paying them a salary.