Washington Post syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer's Friday opinion piece offered three steps the Congress should take, immediately after dropping the Reid and Pelosi bills currently being considered, to truly reform the U.S. healthcare system.
Krauthammer starts off like this: "The United States has the best health care in the world -- but because of its inefficiencies, also the most expensive. The fundamental problem with the 2,074-page Senate health-care bill (as with its 2,014-page House counterpart) is that it wildly compounds the complexity by adding hundreds of new provisions, regulations, mandates, committees and other arbitrary bureaucratic inventions."
In fact, that's one of the biggest gripes from critics: these two bills do nothing to reduce inefficiency or lower cost. Instead they grow the size of government bureaucracy, an inherently inefficient monster.
Krauthammer continues: "Worse, they are packed into a monstrous package without any regard to each other. The only thing linking these changes -- such as the 118 new boards, commissions and programs -- is political expediency. Each must be able to garner just enough votes to pass. There is not even a pretense of a unifying vision or conceptual harmony. The result is an overregulated, overbureaucratized system of surpassing arbitrariness and inefficiency."
Specific problems with the legislation mentioned by Krauthammer include mandates with financial penalties, dictates regarding premium prices, and sliding scales for subsidies, that will, Krauthammer says, result in marginal tax rate increases for the middle class."
The right approach, instead, he says, is an incremental one--"one reform at a time, each simple and simplifying, aimed at reducing complexity, arbitrariness and inefficiency."
The first reform, according to Krauthammer, should be tort reform. Why? Because low-end estimates calculate a savings of $500 billion over ten years as lawsuit costs are decreased and as the practice of so-called "defensive medicine," the ordering of unnecessary tests and procedures designed to prevent malpractice suits, is brought under control. Tort reform is not addressed in either the House or the Senate bill.
The second reform, he says, is the abolition of the ban on buying health insurance across state lines. The reasoning is simple: interstate competition lowers prices. He offers this example: "After all, you can buy oranges across state lines. If you couldn't, oranges would be extremely expensive in Wisconsin, especially in winter. And the answer to the resulting high Wisconsin orange prices wouldn't be the establishment of a public option -- a federally run orange-growing company in Wisconsin -- to introduce 'competition.' It would be to allow Wisconsin residents to buy Florida oranges." Again, neither the House nor the Senate bill addresses the current ban, because, as Krauthammer writes, "...this would obviate the need -- the excuse -- for the public option, which the left wing of the Democratic Party sees (correctly) as the royal road to fully socialized medicine."
Finally, Krauthammer advocates taxing employer-provided health insurance. McCain proposed this during the general election campaign season in 2008, and he was ridiculed by Obama for it. Since the inauguration, however, such a tax has been added by Democrats as a possible component of healthcare reform efforts. Writing about this proposal Krauthammer says, "This is an accrued inefficiency of 65 years, an accident of World War II wage controls. It creates a $250 billion annual loss of federal revenues -- the largest tax break for individuals in the entire federal budget. This reform is the most difficult to enact, for two reasons. The unions oppose it. And the Obama campaign savaged the idea when John McCain proposed it during last year's election."
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Comments: 70
-- requiring us to buy insurance is not a reform
~~~
-- the insurance companies require far too much paperwork,
and Medicare is even worse
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-- insurance companies refuse to accept the forms that the doctors actually use, so they have to hire a staff, just to fill out insurance forms, just to get paid
~~~
2) Tort reform will be found to be unconstitutional (again).
3) State lines mean nothing to those like me, who won't buy insurance.
4) Adding a non-progressive tax to the progressive income tax was done once before, it is called the alternative minimum tax, which no one currently supports.
5) These are not an improvement on adding regressive taxes, and hoping for the best.
3. How high will the fine have to be to force you to buy insurance? The price of the insurance?
3. I will pay whichever is less, the fine, or the insurance.
We're not really high in infant mortality - not if you realize that we count a baby as a baby from the time it's born and nationalized countries wait until the baby is 28 days old to count it as a real human. For them, a baby that's stillborn or who dies right after birth is counted as a spontaneous abortion or miscarriage.
We have more elderly dying in hospitals? Of course. We let our elderly die in hospitals instead of making them die at home, just in case we can save them.
You really need to do some research on this that is not from liberals.
Okay, hundreds of categories to go for you.
... and that is the problem. No matter which political party is to blame for how things are in government today, one thing is for certain. Mismanagement and conceit seem to be at epidemic levels in government. That's why we the people need to think twice before we sign the dotted line on this issue. Why don't we ask more questions? ... Why do we think that it's a good idea to give Congress another 1/6 of our national economy to manage? How are they doing managing our economy right now? Do we really want this ineffective group of crooks to control the health care industry. Do we really want these people deciding how we're going to die and when it's time?
As an electorate, why don't we favor adopting methods that will begin to address the problems (as Krauthammer has suggested) that don't automatically make the government bureaucracy larger. It is not a given that higher taxpayer expense will equal a good product.
At this point, the issue is not whether or not people believe that health care is a right. It's a responsibility and there is nothing responsible about letting the government have the final say when it comes to health care.
With all the scandals and the fraud, why do we - time and time again - leave big decisions and responsibilities up to the government?
People without health insurance end up at the emergency rooms, and the county usually foots the bill when they opt out through bankruptcy for the big bills.
Our county a few years ago covered a huge medical bill for an idiot riding without a helmet (against the law) who didn't have insurance, and was declared indigent.
We have the best Doctors and healtcare - it's the delivery system that sucks.
I have VA and experience nothing of what you all "fear" - infact it is fast efficient and my digitalized medical records were brought from the medical archive and Fort Carson to the VA in Albuquerque in one click of the mouse.
My care has been top notch and we should settle for nothing less - good luck getting that with United, Humana or Aetna - I've has all three and had nothing but headaches and endless arguements about them not paying claims.
Other countries get the proportion right, because they have strict regulation.
Two to five times as much for specialists, depending mostly on reputation.
The upshot was that 19 of the top 20 had medical specialties of some kind, and the other was a CEO.
Climate change is next and it will be the same party of no denial.
Defense is a good example. The preamble says the government will provide for the common defense. The constitution then goes on in the articles where the real power is given to provide for a commander in chief, the raising of an army and navy, etc.
One cannot take a phrase from the preamble and construe it to mean blanket power for the government whenever those in charge think something is in the public interest if the subsequent power to enact the specific provision is not contained in the articles of the constitution.
By the way, did you know that the Bush tax cuts cut tax rates in ALL brackets, removed 11 million low income workers from the federal income tax rolls, and shifted even more of the federal income tax burden to the top brackets? I'm sure you did, right?
For the most part, that's all it was.
"Opportunity to buy", not so much.
That and 1 unnessary war (Iraq) and 1 where we overstayed our welcome (Afganistan) - should have learned from history