The Citizens' Plan to Fix Healthcare in The United States of America
Change is Coming to Healthcare
Certain innate principles must be applied to the healthcare system, for in today's broken system, the lack of these principles ruins the entire system:
1. Healthcare is as basic and inalienable a human right as the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Healthcare should not be merely a privilege for the wealthy, or the well to do. Healthcare should not be beyond the reach of any human being in this great nation, it should not be a hand out, but rather a healthcare system should be an always ready and ever present hand up.
2. Health Care should not be a competitive sport in which sick patients fight between wealthy doctors, and wealthy drug and insurance companies, it should be a system designed with one goal in mind: provide universally available and affordable care, medicine, treatment, and cures to people who are sick. As a standard all US Citizens should have access to the same level of care that our government provides for Congressmen & women, or that any U.S. government employee is entitled to.
3. Healthcare insurance must be Universally Available, Affordable, Non-Discriminating, Irrevocable, Permanent, and Portable. When you become sick with a disease, you should be covered for as long as you are living, not until you lose your job, or your company drops its plan, or until you take a new job. There should be no loophole or any reason whatsoever for any health insurance company to deny coverage for any care prescribed by a licensed medical provider. Any insurance provided otherwise is actually no insurance at all.
4. Medicine as a business model exists somewhere outside the realm of the free market. Sick people do not have the luxury to shop at their leisure for the most affordable medicine, or avoid buying a medication because it is too expensive, or skip a bypass surgery because it is not quite affordable, or to choose a hospital based on cost alone. The laws of supply and demand do not apply to one's health. In healthcare there is the law of need and speed. People buy medicine when they need it, no matter what the cost, and if they cannot afford it, they rapidly become sick, sicker when they attempt to cut cost by skimping on pricey medicine, or dead. Often the sick will sell or give up practically everything they have in order to be able to afford to be well. Many people currently pay more for medicine than they pay for all other monthly bills combined. Any new system must recognize that cost is an afterthought in medical care, and it most certainly is not forethought.
5. Health care must be universally accessible. It must be as readily available as food at the neighborhood grocery store, or water at the tap. Without universally accessible health care, any new system would not be acceptable as it would leave many individuals beyond reach of a licensed medical helping hand.
6. Advertising medicine to the public is counterproductive, counterintuitive, and deplorable. Doing so subverts the national spirit, it greatly increases the cost of medicine, is morally bankrupt, and must be prohibited as it has been before during the era of carpetbaggers, and for good reason it must be once again prohibited.
7. The "Doughnut Hole" principle must be a guiding warning as we take every step forward. The doughnut hole in healthcare is this: You have $1000.00 dollars worth of coverage, and the medicine that would normally cost $1000.00 now costs $2000.00, because you need it, and because they can charge you whatever they want in a free market where price gouging is largely unregulated. This idea bankrupts our insurers, our government, and our patients, while drug companies abuse the system, our national economy suffers. We must eliminate the Plan "D" Prescription Plan and replace it with an incorruptible new system where such a plan is not needed.
8. Electronic data management of health care records must be mandated in order to reduce costs. A card could be carried by individuals that would contain their medical data. As a patient enters a care facility this card can be digitally read, as they leave, it can be digitally updated. It travels with them wherever they go, and it keeps their health information private. We waste far too much money pushing paper around between doctors, insurance companies, and drug manufacturers. We must bring health care paperwork into the modern era.
9. An emphasis must be placed on individual responsibility.
10. Preventative medicine should be fostered and encouraged by rewarding care providers as well as patients who follow doctor prescribed plans and educational instruction. This brings down long term costs, increases the health of our nation's citizens, and encourages a framework of individual and social responsibility. Doctors must have the sole right to determine a patient's eligibility for such rewards, and a local oversight board should be in place in each state and city, separate from insurance companies and doctors to periodically review these types of plans as a third party, so that the system cannot be abused by corrupted individuals.In transition to a new system, a single payer system should be set up alongside, and as an alternative to, the existing health insurance company system, whereby one provider for health care insurance coverage would serve as a standard for insurance care. Currently most health care providers support a single payer plan because they know it would work better than the current system, and 60% of the American Public approves of such a system. By allowing the single payer system to work side by side with existing companies, a smooth transition from the old system to the new system can take place.
1. There must be mandated health insurance for all. We recognize that while our goals are mighty, small steps in the right direction, taken at a steady pace, will get us where we need to be as a Healthy Nation. At the very least, a mandate should be set up for children at the outset of the plan's action.
2. Health care costs have risen exponentially, and in order to get costs under control, the current system must be dismantled, one broken part at a time, and any new system parts will function better once the whole transition is complete. Our new plan must control cost by leaving no-one out of coverage, by spreading risk evenly, and by eliminating broken old systems that serve only to artificially increase costs for treatments and medicines.
3. A basic minimum coverage must be mandated and available from all coverage providers, and the standard should be set by the single payer. Such a system is needed to control costs, availability, affordability, and to help guide existing companies toward positive change and universal availability for all of society. We suggest allowing companies and the single payer system to buy in to Medicare and or Medicaid to establish this base level of mandated coverage.
4. Cost for each individual level of a health care company's plan must be the same from person to person, regardless of age, race, sex, social class, or health. Example: Basic $100/mo Medium $200/mo High end $300/mo would cost the same for a 33 year old white man with cancer as it would cost for a 76 year old Hispanic woman with no ailments.
5. Within the single payer program, the principle idea that by spreading costs we spread reduce risk will be truly maximized by having every citizen in the system. There will be no individuals left out to increase cost. The standards for coverage minimums will be set and mandated by law within the single payer system. In order for outside insurance companies to be eligible to provide care and access to the most basic level of care, or to buy into Medicare, they must meet these standards and abide by all regulations.
6. We must ultimately require the single payer system to negotiate for better drug prices and to be able to shop internationally for affordable drugs.
7. The amount of required paperwork for reimbursement should be legally limited to allow for providers to remain profitable health care providers instead of employers of armies of desk clerks.
8. Alternative medicines and treatments must be covered given that they are prescribed by, or treatment is provided by, a licensed medical professional.
9. Preventative care must be covered by all insurance plans, as it is in their best interest to do so.
10. Mental health coverage must be covered by all insurance plans, as the mentally ill are often victimized by insurance companies.
11. Small group plans should be pooled in order to reduce costs for the self employed and for small businesses.
12. Insurance companies as entities must be prohibited from contributing to congress, the presidential nominees, and the judicial branch, so that the American People's voices can be heard loud and clear on this matter.
13. Certain and definitive ultimate regulation must be rapidly and thoughtfully enacted to stop the health care debacle from going further off the tracks. We must prohibit individual exclusion from healthcare.
14. We must address medical malpractice law under the new plan recognizing that cost controls are in place for care, and that any review board would ultimately be required to take this into account.
15. We must encourage health insurance companies to compete within the new system. Doing so is one of the best ways we can control cost. While cost cannot be different from person to person for a specific level of care, the rate that one company charges for each level of care, or type of coverage can vary as far and as wide as the imagination can take it.
1. Example: 1. Company A charges 100 for basic care 200 for mid level & 300 for top care 2. Company B charges 100 for basic care 500 for mid level and 2000 for top care 3. Company C elects not to participate in the Medicare buy in and charges 100 for basic 650 for mid level care and 1200 for high end
The Citizens' Plan to Fix Healthcare in The United States of AmericaThis Outline for Health Care Reform was drafted by 14 concerned U.S. Citizens. The group is all volunteers and consists of average citizens, insured, underinsured, and uninsured, health care professionals, doctors, both active and retired educators, lawyers, mothers, fathers, daughters and children. We were all inspired and encouraged by the need for change, and this is our best foot forward on healthcare, and we offer it to you as a guide as you endeavor to work on our nation's behalf. Please sign your name here as a pledge to honor our country by endeavoring to fix healthcare in the best way possible in your position as our elected representative.
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