Readers suggessions on how to deal with healthcare reform

I have been asking for the last two weeks or more for suggestions on how my readers would fix reform if the decision was with them. I got some rather interesting suggestions from regular folks, most of them were common sense theories, and others would have to assume some changes in law before they could become enacted.

Ok to start with, any kind of governmental intervention would have to deal with a constitutional problem. The problem is state sovereignty, and how the federal government would deal with removing the states priority dealing with Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance mandates. If this were possible, the Federal Government would have to make a universal mandate about what services would be covered. They would have a lot of difficult decisions to make, because of the need to keep costs down, versus their desire to cover the maximum amount of things they consider to be required services.

If the services were cut to the bare necessities we could possibly see a reduction in costs, but if they keep the mandates from some states requiring invitro-fertilization, hair transplants, abortion, extended mental health services, maternity benefits with no waiting periods, and coverage for medical services for illegal aliens.

One of my readers, “Turk 182” made some common sense suggestions
Let me ask this, if companies can get "group insurance" at a reduced rate, then why can't America as a whole get the same thing as a group? If that were possible, then we could eliminate individual policies thereby eliminate the term "pre-existing condition."

Offer two or three levels of care for everyone, and make that range vast. Make everyone subscribe to one of those forms.

Maybe offer one HMO for the poor, that offers decent catastrophic insurance and maybe a top of the line PPO for those who can afford it.

Now eliminate ANYONE from using the ER as a primary care physician, screen them for actual emergencies, if it isn't an emergency, show them the door.

Institute a wide sweeping tort reform, not to eliminate lawsuits against bad doctors, but to limit the the high side of awards.

Include a consumer based panel that could make decisions on treatments on the lower scale insurance.Eliminate all state based insurance requirements, make a base federal requirement.

Turn all state Health Insurance Commissioners into Federal Insurance Commissioners.

Allow all disputes through these commissioners.Place no lifetime limits on specific treatments.

Keep Government out of Health Insurance; instead change the terms of how it's offered.Keep private insurance companies involved make them offer exactly the same plans, then and only then will a true competition.

Give companies that donate the most into an employee’s health insurance corporate tax breaks instead of punishments for those who don't.

Everyone on the same playing field is the only answer.

Another reader by the name of “Young Paleocon” made a few suggestions
I'm a strong proponent of a voucher system for Healthcare. As a
Paleoconservative, I'm opposed to government intervention but I'm letting my compassionate site get the better of me (and accepting a fate better than Obama's proposal). My type of system would eliminate all state regulations and allow the 1300 different insurance companies to compete across all markets.

The increased competition and options across state lines would drive price down while making government smaller (By giving the federal government more power, ironically). Each American that did not get healthcare through their employer and was below a wage-limit would be eligible to take their tax credit and purchase insurance on their own. They could also just take the money as a tax cut. The government would receive no oversight powers to where the money is spent.

And last but not least “herb”
I don’t think 100% of Healthcare should be paid by government. I believe that the government should only pay for catastrophic care. Then like Medicare each individual could purchase supplemental insurance from private carriers, thus keeping them in business. Once you remove the personal responsibility the system is far more prone to abuse.

He agrees with Turk 182 on the idea of removing the system of individual policies thereby removing the term pre-existing conditions.

Removing individual policies would remove the need for insurance companies to turn down pre-existing conditions.

I’d like to thank my loyal readers for sharing their ideas with me; I find it funny that no ideas even came from the left, so I have to assume they like the HR 3200 bill the way it is.

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