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Sensible solutions
By John Welch
Contributor
Published October 22, 2009
Many Americans attended town hall meetings and many more heard the president’s address to Congress. Much has been said of the more than 1,000-page H.R. 3200 and similar bills now being negotiated in committees.
The president has said, “I will not accept the status quo.”
I do not know anyone who opposes reform and I do not know anyone who supports current Democrat efforts to craft a bill.
Reform that will greatly improve the system includes:
•Make health insurance portable.
•Mandate federal minimum coverage requirements, remove state barriers and allow insurance companies to sell coverage enhancements. High co-pays, high deductibles and health savings accounts should be encouraged.
•Enact uniform tort reform and call it the Uniform Tort Code. This can reduce the number of lawsuits and reduce costly “defensive medicine.”
•Insure the poor and their children by assisting with up to 100 percent of premiums based on a sliding scale.
Insuring known pre-existing conditions is problematic, particularly for those who choose not to buy insurance until they are diagnosed with a serious illness. One approach is an assigned-risk pool funded by federal and state governments, insurance, hospital and pharmaceutical companies, and other providers; affordable premiums; and tax-deductible donations. Insurance companies can administer the plan and be reimbursed by the pool for treatments related to known pre-existing conditions.
The president has said, “I will not sign a bill that adds one dime to the deficit.” If he referred to a bill such as H.R. 3200 and meant what he said, we can expect higher taxes, higher premiums, cuts in benefits, denials of treatments or a combination of these.
Everyone knows that cost estimates for most major government programs, including Medicare, have been notoriously unreliable. The many “over-10-years” estimates that we hear about almost daily are not believable.
The president and some politicians have unfairly attacked insurance companies by saying or implying that they are not honest, not competitive and that they have been “raking in (excessive) profits.” They are wrong!
Contact your elected officials and ask them to vote “No” on any bill such as H.R. 3200, and “Yes” for sensible solutions.
John Welch
College Station
(Editor’s note: John Welch is a former Paris resident and a retired contract bond underwriting officer for Aetna, Hartford, Conn.)
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