LETTER TO CONGRESS

Following is a letter I wrote to my South Carolina Representative and Senators:

Dear

All of the health care bills that are being considered create multiple bureaucracies, greatly increase reporting requirements, and generally increase administrative costs to all providers. Congress is basically trying to reduce what providers can charge while, at every level, greatly increasing their operational costs.

I read a 1998 CBO study that named the three largest contributors to increasing health care cost as: technology, administrative costs, and malpractice insurance. We don’t want to stifle new technologies, which leaves tort reform, and reducing reporting and administrative burdens as the best ways to reduce costs.

A large part of the admin burden comes from health care being tied to employers. As health care costs increase, companies begin changing plans every year, trying to find the cheapest one. As every plan has different negotiated terms with providers; doctors, hospitals and other providers have to hire multiple employees (and pay their benefits) to figure out and process all the claims.

Another part of the admin burden is created by the maze of government programs. Providers need to hire trained personnel to interpret and process the myriad rules, regulations and reporting requirements.

I know that our legislators and government officials live in a bureaucratic sea, which they probably don’t think about, any more than fish in the ocean think about the water in which they swim. However, those of us in private industry don’t have a bevy of clerks, paid for by the taxpayers, to interpret, manage and create all the paperwork mandated for us. We have to do it ourselves, at a great loss of productive time, or we have to pay someone to do it.

The massive increase in new programs, rules and regulations, layered over old programs will do to the Health Care System what “No Child Left Behind” did to education. That is, it will so burden the health care providers that many will retire early, or otherwise leave the profession, just as many teachers have. We don’t want our doctors and teachers spending all their time grappling with red tape; we want them doctoring and teaching.

Please look for simple, market based solutions, like Qliance in Seattle. Please consider the fact that the government and health insurance providers themselves are part of the problem. Please look to Mississippi, Missouri, Texas and California for tort reform solutions. Please, if there are billions of dollars of fraud and waste in Medicare and Medicaid, solve those problems first. This is the true responsibility of government.

As for the 10 to 17 million uninsured American citizens, we can figure out how to give them excellent care without spending trillions.

Please do not create a huge, government takeover, boondoggle plan that will destroy our country while it rewards special interests at the expense of the elderly, minorities and disadvantaged it purports to help.

On behalf of your Constituents:

HEALTH CARE COST SOLUTIONS

HEALTH CARE COST SOLUTIONS

Following is a list of solutions to the Health Care System that have been proposed by different Conservatives, and health care professionals. They have been mentioned by so many, that I do not remember where I first heard them. Note that none of these solutions involve a government single payer system. Here is what I have so far:

1.Expand HSA’s and allow them to be portable, and to be saved over long periods of time.

2.Tort Reform!!!!*

3.Allow Doctors to charge much less for routine care when they do not have to file for insurance payments. Then Health Insurance will be needed only for catastrophic care. (Example: Qliance in Seattle)**

4.Make Insurance Companies compete nationwide (ie. give option to buy individual or group insurance from companies nationwide).


5.Disconnect health insurance from jobs. Allow people to shop for their own best deal. Allow young, healthy people to buy individual insurance at low rates; then keep it over time no matter who they work for, as they do now with life insurance.

6.If people choose to accept an Employer Group Plan and then leave their job, make sure they have the option to keep their insurance with the plan’s provider, at an individual rate, with no increases for “preconditions”.


7.Eliminate voluntarily uninsured, temporarily uninsured, and illegal aliens from the uninsured statistic (Leaves about 10 to 17 million). Then we can look at ways to help this core group.***


8.Give doctors and Hospitals tax incentives to maintain free clinics for poor.


9.Give back the charitable contributions tax deduction for donations to these clinics.

10.Demand that any “Public Plan” mandated by Congress will apply to them as well.


11.On a gradual scale, increase the age of eligibility for Medicare for anyone who is 60 or less similarly to what has been done for Social Security.

12.Allow Medicare recipients the option of carrying only catastrophic health insurance and allow Doctors to charge them less for the routine care, as above.

13.Vigorously investigate and prosecute fraud.

14.Allow self insurers ie. individuals, medium and small businesses, to group together in pools in order to get lower group rates.

15.Give persons who purchase individual health insurance a tax deduction similar to that given to employers who offer group health insurance to their employees.

*The cost of malpractice insurance, plus the practice of “defensive medicine” is a huge cause of the increased cost.

**I believe another large part of the increasing cost of health care is the huge administrative cost of health insurance to Doctors and Hospitals. I remember when no-one had health insurance and the vast majority of the population could afford to go to the doctor, and to go to the hospital to have a baby, or an appendix or etc. removed.

***I had said that it is Un-American to require people who don't want it, to carry health insurance. However, many have pointed out to me that we require licensed drivers to carry insurance. I'm thinking about this.