The 109th Congress should:
- offer a simplified set of flexible medical savings account options to all
Americans;
- provide a fixed-dollar tax credit option to taxpayers who purchase
health insurance;
- expand consumer choices that increase market-based accountability by
health plans, instead of enacting a patients’ bill of rights;
- fundamentally restructure Medicare to expand competitive private
health plan choices.
-
not add comprehensive
prescription drug benefits to Medicare unless and until it enacts
structural reform of the entire program;
-
encourage states to adjust
Medicaid eligibility criteria and covered benefits to serve fewer
nondisabled, lower-income individuals—but then provide remaining
beneficiaries with higher-quality core health services and make greater
use of cost-sharing incentives;
-
facilitate state efforts to
adapt defined-contribution-style financing as an option for Medicaid
beneficiaries;
-
offer a simplified set of flexible medical savings
account options to all Americans;
-
provide a tax credit option for
taxpayers who choose to purchase health insurance that is not sponsored
by their employers;
-
expand consumer choices that
increase market-based accountability of health plans; and
-
improve access to health care
through incentives to purchase less-comprehensive
insurance, expand high-risk pool coverage, finance charitable safety net
care, and deregulate state insurance regulation.
Would it be extravagant for a political candidate to promise a healthcare
system in which:
- low-cost health insurance is available to virtually everyone --
including people with existing medical problems;
- doctors have the time to understand your problems and know you
personally -- and even make house calls;
- a hospital stay costs only a few days' pay, rather than many months of
your income;
- charity hospitals are available to take care of families that can't
afford the low-cost hospitals; and
- free clinics take care of the everyday medical problems of people too
poor to afford regular doctors.
This is exactly the healthcare system we had in America until the
mid-1960s. It was then that the federal government moved in -- with
Medicare, Medicaid, the HMO Act, and tens of thousands of regulations on
doctors, hospitals, and health-insurance companies. That's when health care
started going downhill.
Why
not real health-care reform?
next: Social Security
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