Build a Health Care Bill: Ideas Submitted by a Reader

The following health care reform ideas were forwarded to me by a reader:

The idea that we need reform in our health care system is not as controversial as the proposed health care measures that are before congress. I am on Medicare and buy a supplemental insurance policy. My Medicare payments for my wife and myself last year were $8400 and this year they are estimated to be more. The supplemental was over 6k and these costs did not count deductibles, co-pays and the amount charged by doctors. Additionally, 85% of my Medicare payments were taxed and since our income was over 125k, the tax amounted to about 30% for a whopping government payment of close to 11k.

The reform package that is so called revenue neutral would add somewhere between 20 and 30 million people to the public option. Let's grant that revenue neutrality is a fact for the moment and also agree that Medicare is going bankrupt in 8 years,. What prevents Medicare from going bankrupt? In elementary school all of us learned that adding 0 to a term which is going negative won't change the result.

A true reform could be written in 100 pages or less and would include the following:

a] A clinic system for the poor [25k/yr or less income] to which they would pay $100/yr. The Gov. would initialize this system with $10b.

b] A risk pool for catastrophic illness to which all could belong for $250/yr/family and to which insurance companies would contribute 0.5 % of gross profit/ yr. The government would budget $5b/ yr to this pool and it would be independently held by a coop that would make investments that were risk constrained, but not government bonds.

c] Businesses would underwrite tax free amounts up to $6k/yr to each employee for health insurance which would be a business expense. Any amount above this would be taxable.

d] The small business association would be allowed to purchase insurance across state lines similar to AARP.

e] Mal- practice awards would be limited to $250k plus medical expenses. Any doctor found to be guilty of malpractice 2 times in 3 years would have to go back to school for a year and be re-certified before continuing to practice. Lawyers' fees bringing such suits would be limited to 20% of award and if the suit was judged to be frivolous would have to pay the legal fees and court costs for both parties. These suits would be decided by a three person panel consisting of a judge, a lawyer appointed by the ABA and a doctor appointed by the AMA or the association to which the doctor being sued belongs. All decisions would be final.
There are several other tenets of real reform should that I have included on my blog, Keeperofthefaith.wordp...

My plan has 9 bullets, costs the Gov. $60b over ten years. If the fraud and abuse savings the congress and the president claim possible in Medicare and the revenue neutral assertion really materialize, then the cost curve will truly bend by $340b over ten years. If not, then by definition the costs will be known and can at least be budgeted.

This plan in the end would address most of that which concerns us, makes the reform understandable to our citizens and removes it from the political agenda that furthers either party's power. Approaching this problem with a real desire to solve it rather than both logic that doesn't compute and legislation that even the most diligent among us either can't or won't understand should be an absolute requirement of our elected officials. If it turns out not to be, I say we should replace them all regardless of party, the training they had before they got elected, sex, race, religion or sexual orientation.

Comments or ways to improve the ideas presented are welcome. As are any other problems you think should be addressed by health insurance reform legislation.

Contribute your ideas as comments to this blog or in the Discussion Board of the Facebook Group "Build a Health Care Bill: We Can Do It Better Than Congress". Or, if you received this by email you can reply by email.

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