The 108th Congress should:
- offer a simplified set of flexible medical savings account
options to all Americans;
- provide a fixed-dollar tax credit option to taxpayers who
purchase health insurance;
- expand consumer choices that increase market-based
accountability by health plans, instead of enacting a patients’
bill of rights; and
- fundamentally restructure Medicare to expand competitive
private health plan choices.
Would it be extravagant for a political candidate to promise a
healthcare system in which:
- low-cost health insurance is available to virtually everyone
-- including people with existing medical problems;
- doctors have the time to understand your problems and know
you personally -- and even make house calls;
- a hospital stay costs only a few days' pay, rather than many
months of your income;
- charity hospitals are available to take care of families
that can't afford the low-cost hospitals; and
- free clinics take care of the everyday medical problems of
people too poor to afford regular doctors.
This is exactly the healthcare system we had in America until
the mid-1960s. It was then that the federal government moved in --
with Medicare, Medicaid, the HMO Act, and tens of thousands of
regulations on doctors, hospitals, and health-insurance companies.
That's when health care started going downhill.
started going downhill.
Why
not real health-care reform?
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