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While the U.S. Senate deals with the House Bill 2 that repealed the American Patient Protection and Affordability Act, now is the time to replace that bill with real reform.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.