My Daughter Rachael
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Better Health Care Access without Furthering National Debt
Congress, the President and the New York appointed Senator want to expand a Medicare-based system for "Universal Health Care". This will further lob on additional national debt and inflation.
Medicare, in most objective reports, is imploding. Instead, we need to reduce the Medicare and Medicaid pool and increase the access to more highly regulated private insurance options. These regulations will include capping monthly premiums:
- Family at $700 to start
- Individual at $275 to start
We need to cap liability insurance for providers and cap tort claims to offset that.
The bottom line is that while the Congress and Senate argue over single payer, Medicare models, and socialized medicine, we still have nothing. My idea is to have a stepping stone approach.
As an example, I chose a billion dollar company, with 125 employees. It is called The Connell Company and is an example only. If each employee’s premium were cut an average of $100 per month by Federal cap law, the company would save $1.5 million dollars in 10 years. That is an enormous amount and is only one company.
When you factor in insured’s across this country and cap even modestly, the billions in dollars in the pockets of the public and businesses is a free-to-taxpayer Economic Stimulus Package that keeps on giving. The factor that is preventing this in part is the $50 million in lobbying money from the insurance industry to your Congressman/woman and Senators. Go to opensecrets.org to check that out.
We need action now and all the career politicians in this race for US Senate will never agree to do what I want to do above. The only way to make this work is to vote in those that will and vote out those that won't. I am not and have no intention of being a career politician.
All the other factors listed in the “stones” off to the side need tweaking along the way. In my own practice, we keep fees modest, overhead low and compensation fair. Patient personal responsibility and better public health involvement is crucial also. Health education at the middle school level is very important.
Having a special needs daughter (autistic, seizure disorder, developmental delay, and mild cerebral palsy) makes me especially aware of needed improvements in schools and funding for prevention of autism.