PEORIA -- Why don't we hear about these ideas from the politicians talking about reforming the US health care system?
What would each of these cost? Has no one looked into it?
1. Medicare: Roll it back to age 60 immediately, and thereafter annually add a year to reach age 55. Coverage would be voluntary. Eliminate the so-called 'donut hole.' Require competitive bidding for prescriptions. Let the insurance companies write Medigap policies as they do now, and expand the list to include dental and eye coverage. Drop Medicare Advantage plans to save money.
2. Medicaid: Expand eligibility, cover all children under age 18, fund it for the states. Explore national long term care coverage.
3. Private insurance: Institute tough regulations, including ban on underwriting for preexisting conditions and on arbitrary cancellations for anything except non-payment, allow national coverage to rule out monopolies, but keep state insurance regulations in place.
4. The uninsured: Set up state and national exchanges in which insurance companies can participate and compete for customers if they meet federal standards. These would be open to all but voluntary. (A pubic option should go here, as well, but to date that looks unlikely.)
4. Efficiencies: Standardize all medical forms, subsidize computerization.
Evaluate how effective these reforms are after five years. If they don't work, go to single payer, Canadian style. By then, perhaps the US will be out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and can afford to pay for health care for all.
-- Elaine Hopkins
UPDATE 9/21/09: Hear consumer advocate, corporate critic, author and presidential candidate Ralph Nader discuss Congress's failure to pass any meaningful financial reform on Wall Street over the past year and critique Obama's healthcare reform proposal.
Yes, I know, Nader is the cause of Bush's 2000 seizure of the presidency. But this interview on Democracy Now is worth reading or listening to especially for a discussion of Nader's first work of fiction, "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!"
Here's the link.
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