Back To Your Health, America.

I do not believe a government run single payer system is right for American healthcare. It would, however. solve the crisis of the uninsured and therefore, if all else is ignored for too long, it will probably come to that. I believe there is an alternative to that vast change of the system, and to the pointless and toothless minor plan changes the conservatives try to foist upon us whenever there is an outcry that the government is ignoring healthcare reform. Meaningful reform can keep what is best about our system: free markets, competition, innovation and vitality while wringing out huge swaths of cost and unfairness. We are going to examine some broad concepts here. I hope you will be able to journey with me soon into the intricacies of the situation by holding a book written by me and read by you. That still remains to be seen. So.... Since I believe that government run plan would be lethal to some because when the payer is so vast and stands above regulation by enforcing it, you will see rationing and no culpability when there are nasty results. Look what the government wrought just by implementing rules in ERISA to allow HMO's to deny care without being sued. They did this to basically allow HMO's to flourish, since this was the basic tenet of HMO's--controlling costs. The problem of the HMO's, much like for a government payer, is when you are very sick, and they can either keep paying for care or deny it and hasten your death...from a profit, or cost reduction perspective, what would you do? I think every health plan should be required to supply their policy holders with life insurance too, thereby creating an incentive to keep you alive! (I'm being facetious, by the way, because they would merely create a securitized pool for that risk and spin it off of their books and thereby circumvent the spirit of the act). Anyway, you can see that I do not believe that the core of saving money and cutting costs in the healthcare system is by denying care. And yet, together, we will journey into a basically free market plan that will cut far more costs then many in governemnt ever thought possible. Ihave worked in healthcare and created a plan for the uninsured. I have worked with a lot of providers. There is waste and unintended opportunity for profits out there for independent practitioners. There are incentives to deny good medical care built into managed care. So where do you go for good affordable medicine? Hospital clinics. Practitioners that feel they are using the resources of their own organization and being watched by experienced administration with healthcare backgrounds can walk the fine line between wasteful and miserly care. Utilizing work flow and six sigma process improvement techniques; adopting technology, utilizing professionals such as RN's and Physician Assistants, we can design clinics that run efficiently and in a timely manner without sacrificing all the good elements they bring to the table. Government oversight and auditing is also streamlined in this realm. I am not advocating we abolish independent practitioners or we restrict their access in the plans. I call for the design of copayments to be structured to make it less costly to go to the clinics, and you would pay more for the option to go to the independent practitioner of your choice. In this way, you would pay some of the difference in savings your plan would lose by your choice of practitioner. We will continue to look at straight medical care for a while before returning to Mental Health which requires a somewhat different reorganization. And Dental, which will see some changes as well.