The author, Mark Schmitt, is a T-12 paraplegic and has worked in the rehab industry for nearly twenty years.
It is amazing that the election of one person can change the direction of the health care reform. I believe that everybody wants health care to change for the better. The issue is, do you go down the road of more government control or changing the structure of health care for the better?
Maybe with the election of Senator elect Brown, the Congress will explore the following options a bit more:
- Break up the monopolies and allow all insurance companies to sell across state lines.
- Go after non-profit hospitals that are not providing free or discounted health care to the needy as they are required to do under law (No new laws, just enforce the ones we have and close the loopholes if needed).
- Take away the anti-trust laws protecting insurance companies.
- Use anti-trust laws against health care corporations that dominate a region and do not bargain fairly with insurance companies. Break them up if necessary.
- Allow the creation of health care cooperatives that will bring like minded, similar businesses and organizations together to bargain for cheaper health care.
- Tie the drug prices to what the Veteran’s Administration currently pays for them (at the best market price available).
- Expand the health savings accounts to put our health into our own hands so we can build them for our future.
- Give the self-employed the same tax breaks that we get from our employer sponsored plans.
- Reward the states with lower health care costs and punish the states with higher costs (not the other way around).
- Use the existing laws to go after the providers that are robbing Medicare (they are strict enough).
The current health care bills have a lot of good and needed reforms that most of us can agree with and support. The bad of it is when you start to erode the benefits of the have’s to pay for the benefits of the have not’s.
We need to start over and listen to both sides of the aisle.
What would you like to see in the health care bill? What do you think is working now? What is not working?
Photo Courtesy of Emily Chastain
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Great suggestions, Mark. It’s very refreshing to hear someone proposing free market-based solutions rather than endorsing increased government control, which would simply cause prices to rise even faster than they have been, and reduce the quality and availability of care.
One major improvement to our current system that was not part of your list is medical malpractice reform. The personal-injury lawyers have taken advantage of our current system, and this is one of the major sources of our skyrocketing costs; significant reforms are needed. One suggestion includes legalizing and promoting “negative outcomes insurance.” According to Ron Paul, “Negative outcomes insurance is a novel approach that guarantees those harmed receive fair compensation, while reducing the burden of costly malpractice litigation on the health care system. Patients receive this insurance payout without having to endure lengthy lawsuits, and without having to give away a large portion of their award to a trial lawyer.”
Also, we need to ensure that we keep the nutritional supplement market minimally regulated; pending legislation sponsored by John McCain threatens to drastically increase the costs of supplements, and begin to regulate many of them as prescription drugs. Such an approach would be a huge step in the wrong direction; it would move decisions from the individual consumer to their doctor, and would disastrously increase the cost of effective and safe over-the-counter treatments.
I’ll soon be 67 years old and have been earning a paycheck for over 50 years. We are a single-income family because my wife and I are the legal guardians and care for our 30 daughter that has CP. She doesn’t walk and is non-verbal. On top of that, my wife has had breast cancer. I can’t retire because I couldn’t afford the the insurance, if I could find coverage. Don’t get me wrong I have a good job but I’m not sure how many more years I can work 40-50 hour weeks and 24×7 support one week every 8 weeks.