Sunday, January 23, 2011

Repeal and Replace

Last week, the U.S. House voted 245-189 to repeal the American Patient Protection and Affordability Act (aka Obamacare).  While that is a significant milestone to reversing big government takeover of the health care industry, it leaves a void of health care reform.  Contrary to the leftist propaganda, conservatives do want health care reform, but it must deal with cost constraint and not the delivery of health care to Americans.

During the crafting of Obamacare, the Democrats hijacked the argument and failed to focus on the end game - controlling the cost of health care.  Health care expenditures represent 1/6th of the U.S. economy, and are going higher.  Fortunately, Americans are smarter than the Democrats in Congress and voted against them in the mid-term elections.  But repealing Obamacare will only repeal the bill, and is not a substitute to not crafting legislation of meaningful health care reform that addresses cost constraint and lack of competition in the health care insurance industry.

While the U.S. Senate deals with the House Bill 2 that repealed the American Patient Protection and Affordability Act, now is the time to replace that bill with real reform.  Here are a few suggestions by BlueHenConservative:

  • Health Care Inter-State Competition Act, which would compel states to mandate intra-state commerce of health insurance policies.  The bill would also compel state Insurance Commissioners to regulate the health insurance firms, much as they do property, life and auto insurance firms which compete freely in all fifty states.
  • Health Care Tort Reform Act, which would compel states to establish limits on awards from health care court cases, based on historical and actuarial calculations by industry states.
  • American Health Insurance Affordability Act, which is part two of the Health Care Intra-State Competition Act would compel states to establish insurance pools based on population on basic, intermediate and high-need health needs.  States would be encouraged to market the plans to its residents to reduce the number of insured in each state.
  • Health Care Technology Act, which would compel states to regulate health providers to leverage technology versus paper records, and also to share records with other providers to reduce overlap of unnecessary procedures and drug prescriptions.
  • Health Care Non-Discrimination Act, which would prohibit health insurers from denying coverage to patients who have existing conditions.  The act would also prohibit discriminatory pricing as a result of existing conditions.
Congress would be wise to adopt these separate and simple reform measures to the cost of health care.  America does not need a nearly 3,000 page bill to dictate how health care should be delivered in America.

2 comments:

  1. BlueHen I like your suggestions but Repeal/Replace is the wrong mantra. Implement/Improve and Innovate is the way to move forward.

    On your ideas:
    1) States regulate all types of insurance and not all companies in auto/home etc operate in all 50 states due to regs. Same in Hcare due to all sorts of cpaital and regulatory hurdles. This is a major states right/conservative issue. Forcing states to accept sales cross border with plans they do not regulate violates all conservative and tea party principals

    2) Agree IF the rights of legitimate plaintiffs for proper compensation can be separated from the junk lawsuits.

    3) Unrealistic to keep costs down for all and cover all.

    4)Agree 1000%. The one area legislation can really reduce costs drastically and increase efficiency and drive the information infrastructure to connect all areas of the healthcare supply chain. "Information logistics" is key here.

    The beginnings of this are already moving ahead in the HITECH law with EHR's as the base.healthaffairs.org/blog/2011/01/12/unfreezing-the-health-it-market/
    A truly integrated IT system would cut costs 50%+

    5)This is the core of the issue and is like "mom and apple pie". We all agree here. Without some sort of enrollment control- indiv. mandate - this cannot work economically.

    You may like our twitter twitter.com/bentelligence as well as our website www.bentelligence.com for news on the industry.

    ReplyDelete
  2. If you notice, I deferrred to the states the task of increasing competition across state lines.

    Thanks for the feedback.

    ReplyDelete