10 "Simple" Steps to Health Care Reform

How can you argue about a reform plan when you don't even know what will be in it? And yet, town halls go on and on through the hot and lazy last days of summer.

So, as my father used to say, if you want something to cry about, I'll give you something (raised hand above my shrinking frame). Here are ten simple things we can do to reform health care.

1. Make health insurance mandatory, but make coverage compulsory for insurers. The insurers can't survive if they don't have the healthy people on their rolls as well as the sick, and the healthy young people often opt out. (As it is, the rise of DNA testing is going to change the insurance industry as people use their DNA test results to decide whether or not to buy insurance and what kind to buy. In the future, without mandatory health insurance the system will collapse.)
2. Make everyone pay something -- employers, employees, and the unemployed, but make the premiums reflect true costs. Medical care is expensive. Subsidize those who truly can't pay. Become tranparent about the costs of medical care.
3. Regulate insurance companies like utilities, and do it nationally. Allow buyers to buy across state lines.
4. Negotiate with drug companies nationally.
5. Put a limit on jury awards and on legal fees in medical cases.
6. Go back to the days of banning law firm and drug company advertising. We have created an artificial demand for drugs that treat overactive bladder and restless leg syndrome by re-defining annoyances as sicknesses and creating pills for them at great expense.
7. Make computerization of medical records mandatory within a few years, and subsidize (i.e., tax credits) record conversion to get it done. Introduce uniform applications, medical records, and claims forms nationally, preferably open source.
8. Increase the number of doctors and nurses by providing subsidies and tax benefits to both students and medical educational institutions. Provide some form of loan forgiveness for primary care docs , pediatricians and geriatricians. Not every doctor visit should be to a specialist.
9. Put everyone under the same system. No separate deals for Congress, Federal and State employees, high paid executives, or special groups like retired railroad workers.
10. Basic coverage for everyone, with 5 star benefits only for those who can pay. Not everyone can have a Cadillac.

I wish I had thought of all these. Some of them are mine, but the bulk of them come from a retired insurance industry exectutive.

Now go off and fight in your town halls.

Follow Francine Hardaway on Twitter: www.twitter.com/hardaway

Comments

[natashax]

Re: "Go back to the days of banning law firm and drug company advertising. We have created an artificial demand for drugs that treat overactive bladder and restless leg syndrome by re-defining annoyances as sicknesses and creating pills for them at great expense" While I agree that drug company advertising can harmfully influence health decisions, I take exception to your categorization of overactive bladder as an "annoyance­." It is crippling, not merely annoying, to never be more than a few steps from a bathroom. If you do venture out, you accept the humiliation and discomfort of a soaking wet incontinence pad. Imagine what kind of life you would have at any age, but especially if you are an active 30 year old.

[Steph55]

WHAT IS A FIVE STAR BENEFIT????

CANCER TREATMENT?
PLASTIC SURGERY???
DNA COUNSELING???
PARKINSON'S TREATMENT???
THERAPY AFTER A STROKE, SO YOU DON'T WIND UP IN A VEGETATIVE STATE IN A NURSING HOME???
HOME HEALTH CARE AFTER A HEART ATTACK??
BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION THERAPY FOR AUTISM, TO PREVENT LINGERING SOCIAL MALADJUSTMENT??

WHAT IS IT THAT THOSE WHO CAN PAY, WILL GET OVER THOSE OF US WHO CAN'T???

WILL THEY GET WHAT THEY NEED OR JUST GET IT IN A PRETTIER BUILDING, WITH BETTER WALLPAPER, OR ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT GIVING MINIMAL CARE, UNLESS WE HAVE THE BIG BUCKS, JUST LIKE NOW????

[Fatesrider]

Inasmuch as the points made in this article would help to a small extent in bringing health care to everyone, there is really only one way to actually drive down the cost of health care to make it affordable for everyone:

Eliminate the profit motive.

The example I cite most often in supporting the truth behind this assertion is the fact we have spent trillions of dollars and literally millions of man-years in looking for cures and have succeeded in curing only one - Smallpox.

The simple fact is that all for-profit businesses have a legal fiduciary duty to the company and/or stockholders to create a profit. From planned obsolescence in manufacturing to repeat business in the services industry, repeat business is the only way to guarantee an on-going flow of funds and profits. Treatments need to be repeated, thus creating more profit. Even if one charges an arm and a leg for a cure, it's one-time income and has a limited amount of money it can generate for a business.

We spend more per capita on health care than any other First World nation on earth. And yet, we have 15%-50% of our population uninsured or under insured.

People die in the US because some company has a legal requirement to make a profit. Until the profit motive is taken out of, or adequately addressed in, health care in the US, people will continue to die just so someone else can make a buck.

[blakeart]

Great Post Francine - Short, Sweet, full of sense... without a hidden agenda, which is the problem with all these politicians that have to pretend they care for the common man, while they take campaign contributions from the Corporatocracy that has no interest other than fleece the population for premiums and deny them care. So sad.

Check out my latest post - it's about the Health Care Debacle as well, but it was “Ghost Written” by none other than George Carlin!

http://blameblakeart.wordpress.com