THE NATIONAL HEALTHCARE PLAN AS IT SHOULD BE.
To save the quality of our healthcare and expand coverage we need to change our insurance paradigm. No longer should insurance cover regular, urgent, or mild chronic care. The only insurance people should be able to purchase should be emergency and catastrophic coverage. People should be able to pay out of pocket for much of the healthcare they receive. To do so we need a new Health Savings Account (H.S.A.) paradigm. People should be able to put a dollar into an H.S.A. completely tax free. In other words if I made $50,000 this fiscal year and put $8,000 into my H.S.A., then my income taxes should start being calculated at $42,000. Whatever my employer contributes to my H.S.A. should also be completely tax free and that H.S.A. should be a lifetime right.
In exchange for that tax right I should NOT be able to spend that $8,000 on any other thing other than actual healthcare or health insurance coverage (i.e. emergency/catastrophic insurance). That $8,000 is now in a new and separate marketplace – one reserved for healthcare related purchases only – never to be taken out for any other reason than for medical need. It would be a debit card system with HSA funds only that would accumulate over the years. This solves our national healthcare problems period.
THE DETAILS
Truly, the devil is in the details and so it should be stated that Medicaid, Medicare, and the VA should continue to exist but changed to reflect the new healthcare paradigm. The government should subsidize H.S.A. accounts for the poor, the retired, and veterans while providing for the emergency/catastrophic healthcare insurance (and services). VA hospitals should not be closed.
Insurance premiums should be legally tied to preventative medical care such as regular checkups, blood tests, measured fitness scores…. If you have checkups, blood tests, good fitness scores for your age group, and/or a good track record for managing your existing ailments, then your premiums should be less than for those who do not have better life long health practices.
Monies in the healthcare market (i.e. in Health Saving Accounts) should be freely transferable from one HSA account to another HSA account without any kind of penalty. This would allow families to take care of each others’ healthcare costs and expedite securely charity donations. As long as the money is spent in the healthcare market everybody will benefit from this provision.
All healthcare providers should be required to post all healthcare costs on the internet for the purposes to enable shopping for healthcare services. The difference in healthcare services will then reflect the quality of care being provided. This is one benefit of shopping for services. The other benefit to shopping for healthcare is that fraud will drop drastically when the shopper’s own finite allowance for healthcare is on the line.
Today the U.S. subsidizes the healthcare of other advanced nations such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada and countries Europe. Our drugs cost less in those countries than they do here. In Switzerland the government mandates their drug manufacturing industry to charge less than cost and are then needing to charge those outside of Switzerland much more than cost plus profit. Why are we subsidizing socialized medicine in these countries? Enough is enough.
The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) needs to be repealed. Physicians once again need to be given their constitutional rights back to create and run practices as ongoing business concerns. Businesses like dentistry, cosmetic surgery, and lasik eye surgery have generally not been paid for by health insurance companies and they are yet thriving businesses. Freeing the entire medical field and putting purchasing choices in the hands of consumers will increase the numbers covered and increase the quality of care.
Tax free Health Savings Accounts are the ultimate in healthcare transportability plans period. They cross state lines without any problem whatsoever and do not infringe on privacy rights the government would get rid of.
For every one hundred new cases of people with pre-existing conditions (every fiscal year) the insurance industry should be required to enroll 70 of them into one of their plans. Insurance companies will then compete via price for these patients/clients with pre-existing conditions. They will be looking and competing for the least sick of these individuals. The remaining 30 of 100 should be then placed on some Medicaid program tailored for their needs and circumstances.
If someone earns $10 million and puts $5 million into his or her Health Saving Account tax free, that is fine. That money can’t be spent on anything else but healthcare, will be used instead of others’ tax money, and will drive medical discoveries. Steve Jobs’ medical issues were paid for by him and any new discoveries will eventually be shared by all and at a lower cost.
Health discoveries earned in part or in whole on the public dime (at the State or Federal level) that lead to new or better healthcare products should earn their fair share of revenue that should be funneled into the Medicaid-Medicare-VA system. If a discovery was 50% funded by government, then government should earn 50% of the profits for as long as a patent is held.
Taxing medical devices to lower healthcare prices and increase coverage is an oxymoron that needs to be repealed and I guess has been but needs to be permanently taken off the table as viable idea.
A new, licensed profession of Healthcare Advisor should be established to advocate for and help citizens navigate through their healthcare decisions should they decide they such help.
I, the undersigned citizen, support this alternative and petition for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act.
Signature: Date:
Address:
Please sign and send to your Federal representatives. Ask your friends and family to do so too.
