HEALTHCARE
Affordable and accessible healthcare for all Americans is essential and should be administered through a mix of public and private sources. In order to make affordable healthcare available to all Americans, government-run programs need to be operated in a more cost-efficient manner and a framework needs to be established that permits the medical and insurance industries to retain reasonable profits while balancing consumer protections.
Since the inception of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, the United States has encouraged public-private cooperation to deliver excellent healthcare through a competition-based system with federal and state protections. Medicare and Medicaid serve the valuable functions of administering healthcare to the most vulnerable among us, our elderly and our poor. In order to continue to provide these valuable services, we need to make adjustments to Medicare and Medicaid so that we can sustain the programs for future generations.
Medicare is not sustainable in its current form. Long-term viability and continued coverage for senior citizens requires significant adjustments to maintain the program. Instead of the government being the “consumer” of all healthcare on behalf of senior citizens, the Medicare program should be adjusted to begin allowing participants more control over how and where their Medicare dollars are spent. Shifting the distribution of healthcare premium support payments from government bureaucrats directly to senior citizens would allow senior citizens to properly take their role as the true consumers and choose coverage and services from competing insurers and medical providers. This would allow senior citizens to best choose where their healthcare dollars are spent for their specific needs and allow free market forces to help keep healthcare costs down.
The Medicaid program is also in need of reform. A block grant system that allows states to innovate with federal healthcare dollars would allow states to better allocate those dollars in the ways that best serve their constituents. Those block grants, however, should be distributed in a way that includes patient protections and specific parameters to encourage responsible use of federal monies while encouraging innovation and efficiency on the part of the states. The block grant program should include a mechanism for change and adaptation so that the amount of block grants provided to states can reflect changing demographics of states over time.
In the private sector, healthcare is a unique industry that currently lacks the usual economic forces applied to other industries. The best solution is responsible regulation of a free market healthcare system in which costs and profits are transparent for insurance companies, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, doctors and patients. Genuine competition in healthcare is impossible without transparency and information. These concepts need to be incorporated into a revision of the Affordable Care Act and must be incorporated into the private insurance sector as well.
Some of the steps that can be taken in furtherance of the above goals includes the following:
Encourage genuine competition with informed patient choice by increasing transparency in hospital, doctor, pharmaceutical, and medical procedure costs.
Create “purchase pools” with state oversight to help small businesses and individuals afford healthcare.
Repeal the “Cadillac Tax”.
Guide tort reform in order to reduce the number of frivolous lawsuits against doctors and lower medical malpractice insurance costs.
Prohibit delayed generic medication approvals.
Create physician access to external prescriptions in order to help combat the opioid crisis.