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Group: Forum Members
Last Login: Monday, December 14, 2009 11:24 AM
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* Making all medical expenses tax deductible.
* Eliminating federal regulations that discourage small businesses from providing coverage.
* Giving doctors the freedom to collectively negotiate with insurance companies and drive down the cost of medical care.
* Making every American eligible for a Health Savings Account (HSA), and removing the requirement that individuals must obtain a high-deductible insurance policy before opening an HSA.
More freedom to choose and innovate will once again make our health care the best in the world.
http://www.randpaul2010.com/issues/h-p/health-care/
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Group: Forum Members
Last Login: Wednesday, November 25, 2009 12:30 AM
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| I don't see a problem with these measures. Why doesn't the GOP get behind these? If they did, i bet they would have more credibility.
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Group: Forum Members
Last Login: Tuesday, December 15, 2009 1:38 PM
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Here are a 5 things that would help drive down the cost of health care and with a little effort many more could be discovered and implemented without decreasing the quality of the health care we receive, but would greatly reduce the cost. It is not that anyone issue would be the complete answer but each would save a meaningful amount and all of them together would save a signification amount of money for the US consumer.
1. Remove all regulations where the cost of implementing the regulation is more than the benefit from the regulation. Each regulation should be examined as to its cost benefits.
2. Restructure the tax to promote sharing of equipment and services between Medical Care providers where practical.
3. Restructure the money spent on indigent care into a more effective treatment system. Hospitals could set up clinics or use existing clinics for these folks and others to be seen for normal/preventive health care and the emergency room be reserved for emergencies.
4. Restructures our laws so that Doctors can decide what medical test are necessary without unreasonable fear of being seconded guessed by a jury. Each unnecessary test adds unnecessary cost and possibly many hundreds of dollars to the consumer and/or their insurance company.
5. Restructure the regulations (state by state) on the insurance industry to ensure they are also meeting the requirement of producing more benefit than cost. There really isn’t any reason why an insurance policy that meets the requirements in one state can’t also be sold in all other states. This is the single biggest factor that would increase competition and cut the cost to the insurance company of having to maintain separate policies and regulations for each state they sell in.
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Group: Forum Members
Last Login: Tuesday, December 15, 2009 1:38 PM
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"* Making every American eligible for a Health Savings Account (HSA), and removing the requirement that individuals must obtain a high-deductible insurance policy before opening an HSA."
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two additional comments:
I have opted out of opening a HSA because of the restriction that all money not spent at the end of the year is lost. If this restriction was removed, then I would gladly open a HSA and build it over a couple of years. Then I would replace my current insurance with a very high deductable policy and pay all my normal expenses throught the HSA ... I believe that would save alot on my insurance premimum.
The other comment is ... not only should small business be given the tax breaks ... but also individuals that chose or otherwise have to buy their own insurance.
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Group: Forum Members
Last Login: Friday, December 11, 2009 2:26 PM
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I think the only thing we need to do is eliminate the ridiculous laws that don't allow people to purchase individual policies across state lines. We don't even need to mess with individual states' regulations, just leave all other regulation alone.
If we did this there would be an explosion in the individual market with multiple effects:
1) This would help break the employer based insurance structure at least in small businesses & perhaps eventually in larger businesses by allowing individuals to purchase their own insurance that suits them best. The people struggling without insurance after all are not working for government or large business that already provide decent health benefits, they are small business owners & employees that pay for their own plans anyway.
2) Most people would seek out initially the cheapest insurance, but later they'd find the states with the best regulatory structure that provides them with reasonable protection while not unduly increasing cost, i.e. the best cost/benefit.
3) States with over regulated insurance (hence overpriced) would be forced to find a more sensible regulatory scheme or face collapse of their domestic insurance business.
4) It would cost next to nothing to implement.
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Dean Angevine (12/11/2009)
I think the only thing we need to do is eliminate the ridiculous laws that don't allow people to purchase individual policies across state lines. We don't even need to mess with individual states' regulations, just leave all other regulation alone.
If we did this there would be an explosion in the individual market with multiple effects:
1) This would help break the employer based insurance structure at least in small businesses & perhaps eventually in larger businesses by allowing individuals to purchase their own insurance that suits them best. The people struggling without insurance after all are not working for government or large business that already provide decent health benefits, they are small business owners & employees that pay for their own plans anyway.
2) Most people would seek out initially the cheapest insurance, but later they'd find the states with the best regulatory structure that provides them with reasonable protection while not unduly increasing cost, i.e. the best cost/benefit.
3) States with over regulated insurance (hence overpriced) would be forced to find a more sensible regulatory scheme or face collapse of their domestic insurance business.
4) It would cost next to nothing to implement.
You would have to completely deregulate insurance in order for what you are talking about to occur because insurance companies are not going to insure someone in one state and have to provide them with the minimum coverage of another. What people miss is the fact that lumping all healthcare together does not yield low-cost, quality care. Healthcare can be separated into low-frequency, high-risk care and high-frequency, low-risk i.e. voluntary, premeditated care. Low-frequency, high-risk is relatively easy to insure as the law of large numbers says that only a certain percentage of people will have these problems and the costs are such that someone would want to insure themselves against this eventuality. There is no real insurance for healthcare that you get on a periodic basis. If you know you are going to get a yearly checkup there is no "insurance" to be had via the insurance company (the chances of it happening are 100%), your premium is really an installment payment plan. However, Doctors need patients in order to make a living, which is at least part of the reason why they sign up with insurance companies. If doctors do not want to deal with insurance companies they must charge on a fee-for-service basis. If they do not, and charge a retainer that covers any visit for a year, say, the state claims they are an unlicensed insurance company and shuts them down. So much for "the family doctor". Other tests and drug plans that insurance companies are required to provide by law under some levels of coverage are incredibly expensive propositions for insurance companies because, while they benefit the individual, on aggregate the basic idea of insurance is subverted as in the case of checkups. It would be much better to have these not insured (in the absence of regulation insurance companies would find some way of phasing coverage out, or making it profitable) and have people decide whether the tests or drugs were worth the cost. Having market supply and demand would lead to a fairer, if not lower price.
I would also add that the health insurance system cannot be fixed by simply focusing on finding a scheme to make insurance less costly for small business employees as the costs have to be spread over as large a group as possible. Such a system is merely another subsidy that may increase costs as every person that is insured increases demand for procedures that are unnecessary and thus drives up the unit cost. Health insurance is regulated like a utility via price-controls so it should not be surprising that there is no competition. However, while electricity or water are generally uniform in terms of quality (water is water) healthcare procedures definitely are not and as long as the Government does not understand this the system will be (to put it politely) totally messed up.
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Last Login: Thursday, February 11, 2010 12:05 AM
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Step one should be to get medical insurance back to covering exactly what the name implies. You have laws in place in states that require insurance companies to cover things like marriage counseling, Chiropractic care, massage therapy. That is not medical insurance! Carefully weed through these mandates and revoke the ones that are not critical. I have auto insurance, it doesn't cover oil changes.
Tort reform is a must and juries must be taken out of the equation. Setting up medical review panels will prevent attorneys from using their clients to play on the emotions of a juror which leads them to forget the medical facts.
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Here is a great article to help you all debate your liberal democrat relatives this holiday season...it lay out very clearly where we are today in health care, how we got hear, and how the liberal agenda is doomed to fail.
http://mises.org/daily/3793
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Brent Parker (12/17/2009)
Here is a great article to help you all debate your liberal democrat relatives this holiday season...it lay out very clearly where we are today in health care, how we got hear, and how the liberal agenda is doomed to fail.
http://mises.org/daily/3793
The only difference between socialism and fascism is that fascism claims to be "budget neutral". Go tell your relatives that Obama is a fascist and see how they react. In case anyone is interested I actually crunched some of the numbers on insurance company and healthcare provider profitability:
http://our.GOP.com/Chris16/blog
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Ryan Mann (11/24/2009)
I don't see a problem with these measures. Why doesn't the GOP get behind these? If they did, i bet they would have more credibility.
Oh, that's easy... Because these are all the things that Ron Paul (a doctor) suggests, and he's just a quack... The GOP will never whole hearted listen to RP, even though they should on every topic...
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