What should we do about the cost of health care?

Lobby the government to move to a single payer system and focus on preventative care. Get everyone on board with living healthier lives. Offer incentives to employers to encourage and help their employees have the time to stay in shape. I'm 34 and I've noticed a steady decrease in the quality and availability of care while the costs continue to climb. It's getting harder and harder to get adequate preventative care. Premiums are high. Copays are high. Taking time off of work costs money as well and is not always possible. The answer: it's a problem for a lot of people. Lobby the government to get them to do something so we can get what we need at a reasonable cost. Health insurance companies are ruining our healthcare system because they want higher and higher profits. It's at our expense.

I'm ok with the health care system the way it is.

*note, health care system means, being able to get to a doctor or hospital when you need to, not to be confused with HEALTH INSURANCE, which is, having someone else pay for it.*

It offers ALL Americans a catastrophic health care package for an AFFORDABLE price.

Key points:

ALL Americans are eligible (and yes, there would be the traditional breakdowns into categories by age, sex, medical condition so that accurate premiums could be offered).

It is a CHOICE, not mandated with scare tactics and punishment—right now the UNINSURABLE are screwed again with things like “Must have insurance or we’ll fine you.” How about making a legit plan available to all before dumping on the victim again?

Catastrophic health care package is ALL that ANYONE NEEDS. The actual purpose of insurance is to share risk so you avoid bankruptcy. This is NOT done at all these days. First, over half of all bankruptcies are for medical bills and most of those folks were insured. Thus the current system clearly does NOT work. Second, this stupid “if you’ve got a nice policy and a sniffle, stop by the doc’s and others will pay for it” runs up medical costs for NO good reason at all. Resources are wasted every day. IF people had to pay for their tendency towards hypochondria or refusal to follow basic sensible provisions, they’d be more likely to change their behavior.

AFFORDABLE is key. Insurance is NOT now affordable and the UHC story helps shed light on why that is. This plan would use a sliding-scale for the premium AND the co-pays so that those who really are not making much money (be they students or folks just starting out in the work force or the retired or disabled) would not pay more than they can afford. There would be a REAL limit on out-of-pocket NECESSARY medical expenditures as well.

Other key plan points:

There would be one physical with follow-up visit per year as well as one ER visit IF NEEDED (how to prevent ER abuse is covered) for reasonable co-pays.

The point here:

Prevention is ALWAYS cheaper than waiting for a problem to develop. It is also the moral approach to medical care. By getting folks in annually we’d be able to save a lot of lives and improve peoples’ productivity. We could also review meds (or if they’re needed), keep people immunized appropriately, answer questions about nutrition and more, and have a baseline of info should the person be in an accident or fall ill. Again, with a reasonable co-pay, there is now NO good reason for folks not to see the doctor. The follow-up makes sense for anyone who HAS a medical issue. If someone came through with flying colors, he would not even need to use that follow-up. Not everyone needs the ER, but it would be sensible IF needed to not leave people SOL. This logical plan would address ALL the legitimate needs of probably 80% of the population.

Another key plan point:

Necessary medications are covered as well as NO caps on necessary medical treatments.

Right now, we have BS like the “donut hole” of Medicare. This would be eliminated as would all fertility treatments, ED med coverage, and anything else which is not NECESSARY. This does not prevent people from receiving treatment for such things—let them find an insurance plan (this plan doesn’t stop others from being offered) or pay for it themselves, but there is no justification to make the taxpayer help someone have kids or sex. There is a reasonable reason for people on insurance to help those with cancer, strokes, heart disease, diabetes, etc. as this is far beyond a quality of life issue and goes to the heart of life and death. This is the same rationale for ending caps on legitimate procedures, like bone marrow transplants, which are quite expensive. Too often now a plan lies and claims something is covered, but by shunting off $25-250K on the patient to pay, that’s NOT a covered item in a rational person’s book.

Funding is described and it resolves another abuse of the taxpayer.