Hotair.com has published the best note on this that I have found here.
Please take the time to read it.
The Senate bill is approaching 3000 pages. Here is a half page solution that preserves your liberty.
The Anatomy of Reasonable Health Care
Major employers, like Boeing, spend twelve to fourteen thousand dollars per employee each year on health care. Tax policy has lead unions to seek tax free benefits including getting employers to provide insurance that covers the first dollar spent on health care. People spend their own money far differently than they do other people’s money. This leads to wasteful practices.
Insurance is intended to cover things that are both expensive and rare, not routine costs. Medical insurance with a $10,000 deductible only costs about $50 a month, not $1200 like many companies spend.
Proposal:
- Require that health insurance have a large deductible on the order of 10 to 15% of the employees salary. The premium would drop to the $50 range.
- Establish Medical Savings Accounts (MSA’s). These accounts would be identical to IRA’s with one difference; they can be used to pay for medical bill before retirement. Upon retirement the account holder can use them any way they like. Employers could fully fund these accounts the first year with the savings on the insurance premiums. They could have up to three times the deductible. Employees could contribute up to 5% of their salary on a pretax basis. Employers could also match this.
- Require doctors and hospitals to post their rates. Today most people have no idea how much any medical service costs. This is the first step toward a more competitive market.
- Require health care providers to charge everyone the same price regardless of wheather they have insurance or not.
- Allow insurance companies to sell policies across state lines. There are over seventeen thousand insurance companies in the US. Let them compete. Some states have such restrictive rules that they only have a handful of medical insurance providers.
- We need medical malpractice reform:
- If the health care provider followed established best practices they are to be held harmless. In other words if they did everything right they should not be sued.
- Bundle disability insurance in with the medical insurance. Sometimes things go wrong even when the doctor did everything right. The disability insurance would kick in these cases and could pay up to 100% of a persons salary.
- Limit non-financial damages to $250,000 unless there was gross negligence such as removing the wrong kidney or operating while drunk, etc.
The above provisions would greatly reduce the cost of health care and preserve our liberties. Even if a person did not have the $10,000 deductible, they can recover from a $10,000 set back. It is only the size of a car payment. There are many charities that step in to help people with these matters as well.
