Health Care

• Congressional leaders advocate legislation to change who pays the premium for health care but do nothing to reduce the cost of health care. What the American people want is LOWER-COST, higher quality health care!
• Trust the tax-payers with the responsibility for managing their own health care budget.
• Free-market forces are more likely to reduce health care cost and increase the quality of services than another government bureaucracy. Can America afford another out-of-control Medicare bureaucracy?
• Guarantee universal, affordable access to health insurance by sharing the insurers’ risk over larger risk pools. Affordable health insurance should not be a condition of employment!!
• Phase out health insurance as an employee benefit
• Enact a universal, simple income tax-credit to off-set the direct cost of health insurance premiums and to encourage individuals and families to invest in individual health care accounts.
• Require private insurers to offer” cafeteria” choices of benefits ( with different coverage costs)
• The Federal Government would pay for coverage for all families and individuals below 150% of poverty line but these families choose from the same private insurance plans
• Mandate affordable, rational, pre-existing condition coverage
• A diagnosis of pollen allergies should not trigger a designation of “high risk” In a patient, absent other complications!
• Conditions that are the result of individual life-style choices should carry an additional premium (i.e. smoking)
• Onset of illness does not trigger increased premium cost
• Encourage preventive care dividend premium credits for individuals and families who reduce their health care risk profile by following life style and preventive care guidelines. These dividends would not reduce the eligible tax-credit.
• Require all hospitals, clinics, laboratories, pharmacies and medical offices to post prices for services so that the consumer can “comparison shop”
• Reduce the cost of prescription medications
• Ban prescription drug ads from television. Reducing demand will result in lower prices
• Require longer, more detailed follow-up studies on FDA approved medications to detect adverse effects earlier and reduce the risk of ruinous class-action law suits
• Prevent US Drug companies from passing all R and D expense to US patients and, then, selling the same drugs around the world at steep discounts.
• Reform Medicare consistent with existing private PPO plans
• Establish ceilings (caps) on non-economic benefitsin mal-practice cases to control the escalating cost of mal-practice insurance.
• Costs of mal-practice insurance are passed on to patients as higher fees for service
• Mal-practice insurance costs (and trailing mal-practice liability) are resulting in a shortage of doctors – especially outside of major metropolitan centers. This puts an increasing number of Americans at risk of not having access to timely and potentially life-saving medical care –.