Posted on 11/01/2013 4:35:11 AM PDT by tips up
Outlaw health insurance and let the doctors and hospitals charge what the market will bear. If you want a plan to cover catastrophic illness start saving your money, moron. Allow patients to make payments on their “balance” forever if they have to use major services.
The reforms actually did not need to be very major, as you have pointed out.
Even if they do manage to revoke Obamacare, however, I wonder at this point if we’ll be able to go back to the restore point in order to start again. He has really wreaked havoc on the whole field.
In theory, I agree with you, but then there's reality: What do you do when they show up at the local emergency room with a compound fracture, meningitis, a six inch gash, acute appendicitis, strep throat, etc. Do you turn them away and let them die?
I don't. Private charities could run charity hospitals they wished, but the government has no business using taxpayer dollars to pay people to be stupid, lazy and/or arrogant.
In all seriousness, there is no solution, including the free market, which will address 100% of circumstances for 100% of the people. It is simply not possible to do so when the solution involves human beings.
However, whether we have ever actually been in the situation before or not, the history of success of the free market, and the myriad failures of "government solutions" leads me to conclude that the free market is the best and only chance we have to get the most efficient and workable system; one which will allow the maximum number of people to obtain adequate health insurance coverage. In my lifetime, I have not seen a single social issue adequately addressed by our federal government. There is a reason for that. The federal government of the United States was not designed to solve specific social problems.
The federal government was designed to provide a politically stable, level playing field on which the free citizens of the nation can avail themselves of opportunities to succeed via a free market. Almost all of our failures as a nation have been the result of the federal government trying to accomplish something it was not designed to accomplish and/or interfering in the free market.
I don’t pretend to be as smart as all these experts but how about make it voluntary.
Insurance companies are still in business (one of the goals is to put them out),
so, they’d be able to step up really quickly with catastrophic plans and HSA management.
They tried to offer ideas when the bill was first being legislated. All were rejected by Reid and the rats.
It was a heckuva lot cheaper than this 2trill+ debacle....
You asked someone else, but I'd like to respond.
At the most, clinics where they pay at least some minimal amount, and they wait in line for adequate care but the least expensive solutions
Basically, I don't want to spend anything on the health care of people who don't take care of themselves. If they knew they were responsible for staying in shape or probably dying young, the ones who did survive would be better off for having the opportunity to make a responsible decision and doing so.
In many cases, too much reliance on medical and pharmaceutical solutions for everything makes people less healthy. Why should I be forced to subsidize that?
It falls apart within the first two or three points.
Move away from employer-based health insurance... Instead, provide everyone with a $2,000 tax credit or voucher toward the purchase of individual insurance.
As my employer loves to make clear to me, they pay about 80% of my insurance premium. Remove the employer from the equation and a $2000 voucher is not going to come close to replacing the insurance I have. I'll be out of pocket an additional thousands of dollars per year. No thanks.
2. Require everyone to purchase, at a minimum, a $2,000 deductible policy providing catastrophic and preventative services only, with subsidies to offset the deductible based on means testing. Remember that this is insurance and not prepaid health care.
In other words, Obamacare with a lousy policy. Where's the improvement?
3. Basic coverage would be determined in a similar manner to the Oregon Medicaid program, with all medical procedures ranked in order of “net benefit.” With input from physicians and the public, a line is drawn through the list based on available public funds; above the line covered and below the line not covered by the basic benefit package.
Of all the things to keep from Obamacare, Death Panels is the one you choose? Really?
5. All licensed health care providers, as a condition of licensure, would be required to provide one week per year of free care, within their scope of practice, to the underinsured or uninsured at a health center or through their own work facilities. Under any system, including Obamacare, many still slip through the cracks and are left uninsured.
The government will force you to work for free? I highly doubt that's constitutional, and in any event is smacks of socialism.
6. Shift from a tort system to a no-fault, single-payment system for adverse events or complications, based on a predetermined fee schedule. This would reduce the costs of malpractice insurance and defensive medicine, and provide timely compensation to patients, avoiding lengthy malpractice litigation, appeals and hefty fees to plaintiff lawyers.
Tort reform and caps on liability payouts already exist in about half the states. There's no evidence that it's reduced insurance costs in any of them.
7. Provide coverage for preventative care and annual physicals, regardless of the insurance deductible, based on evidence-based guidelines.
Another thing Obamacare requires, and I believe it is one of the reasons why a lot of the bare-bones, lower cost insurance plans are being cancelled.
8. Provide wellness incentives toward premium reductions based on smoking status, weight, fitness level and other easy-to-measure criteria. Meeting and maintaining certain goals results in a lower premium or higher tax credit. Encourage healthy behavior financially rather than punishing bad behavior — a carrot rather than a stick.
Who would provide the incentive? Currently my employer does, but you want to remove them from the mix. Will the government step in and decide if you're following your wellness plan and are worthy of a discount? I'm sure Michelle would love to be in charge of that.
Obamacare is a disaster. But this is no solution either.
FAMILY based Health Savings Accounts. w/ emergency tapping of all member 401Ks without ANY penalities, as a safety net. Each account requires catastrophic insurance purchased on the nation-wide open market. Up to 5 generations (people are living longer) of familiy members can all tap and input to the same HSA. At the time of marriage both must select either one HSA family or the other. All or any chosen amount HSA unused inputs at every January 1st can be rolled into all the members 401Ks without penalty or taxation. Each HSA lives on “forever” through family child-bearing adding the next generation.
Fades out social security and institutes market forces to keep medical services and goods shopped for by its members competitive.
Then what?
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
The government has no obligation — or constitutional right — to be in the health insurance business.
Still got 12 to 20 million illegal aliens in our country that would not be covered. How do they participate in this program as they would not be included in any tax rebate. A program like this works in Switzerland because they control immigration. As long as we are the free health care clinic for Mexico, Central and South America this will not work.
There in lies the issue - change the law that requires providers treat people regardless of their ability to pay. No insurance (or proven ability to pay), no treatment.
That might require letting little Johnny with parents who spend their money on all the gadgets but don’t buy health insurance to NOT get his broken arm set. Or the person without health insurance who discovers they have cancer might just have to die at home in pain. Now anyone who walks into the hospital gets treated (at least triaged) without regard for their ability to pay.
BINGO!!!
There is such a thing (at least for now) called free clinics. The foolish can go there. While it may not be the best, at least there is care and the foolish are not penalized for bad decisions.
As it is now, people without insurance clog the emergency rooms with everything from colds to gunshot wounds. I remember several years ago, one of my boys was a lacrosse goalie and took one between the legs. He was rushed to the hospital, only to wait three hours to see a doctor.
Granted they brought two gunshot victims, one man went through a plate glass window and another had a heart attack. The emergency room was wall to wall, half were illegal aliens!
Not one of the better ideas I have ever seen. Next.
There's the old saying that "beggar's can't be choosy." I agree that for a fraction of the cost of Obamacare that we ought to be able to fund clinics and barebones hospitals for those people who are unwilling or unable to buy private insurance. Of course that will create a new battleline for the proponents of class warfare who will immediately file suit claiming that rich white people (meaning anyone with a job and the foresight to buy private health care coverage) get better health cae than poor people of color, women, and children, and that they demand equal access to the rich people's doctors and hospitals because the clinics are demeaning, blah, blah, blah.
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