Ideas for a better Healthcare.........

demint.senate.gov... ar=2009&Type=PressRelease

June 23, 2009 - WASHINGTON, D.C - Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina), chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, introduced the Health Care Freedom Plan, a plan that reduces the government’s grip on the health care market and provides every American with the ability to access and own a health plan that best meets his or her needs. According to a Heritage Foundation estimate, Senator DeMint’s bill will reduce the uninsured by 22.4 million people in just 5 years. The legislation is completely paid for by terminating the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and forcing companies to repay their bailout funds within 5 years.

“All Americans should have access to health insurance that they can afford, own, and keep – and that the government can never take over or take away,” said Senator DeMint. “No American should be forced into a government-run system that limits their choices and rations their care. Democrats’ answer to every crisis is more and more government, but there is a better way that puts patients first, not bureaucrats. By giving all Americans choice and access to the same tax benefits we give to people through their employers, we can cover more uninsured Americans than the Democrat plan, in half the time, and at no additional cost to taxpayers.”

“Under the Health Care Freedom Plan, Americans would be able to keep the care they have now, but if they are uninsured or unhappy with their current plan, they could access a voucher to purchase health insurance anywhere in the country. This will create a true, competitive market for health care that will lower costs and increase quality. And it levels the playing field so all Americans – regardless of their employment benefits or employment status -- have the same access to quality health care.”

“The Democrat bill will cost taxpayers trillions of dollars when we can solve this problem without adding a single dime to the deficit. By repealing the failed financial bailouts, we can give every American a tax benefit that provides them with access to quality, affordable health care coverage.”

“The Health Care Freedom Plan will also help bring down overall medical costs by reducing expensive malpractice lawsuits against physicians and hospitals and by adding transparency to the industry. This plan also ensures that Americans with pre-existing health conditions have access to affordable coverage through Federal block grants for state high-risk insurance programs.”

The Health Care Freedom Plan:
• Protects the right of Americans to keep their employer-based plan without having to pay additional taxes on those benefits.
• Provides Americans without employer-based coverage with vouchers of $2000 for individuals and $5000 for families to purchase health insurance. The premium for the average private policy sold in the individual market in 2007 was $1,896 for an individual and $4,392 for a family (Source: eHealthInsurance)
• Allows Americans with Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) to use their HSA funds to pay for insurance premiums, encouraging employers to contribute to their employees’ HSAs.
• Creates a nationwide market for health insurance by allowing individuals to purchase health insurance plans in any state.
• Provides block grants to states to develop innovative models that ensure affordable health insurance coverage for Americans with pre-existing health conditions.
• Reduces predatory and frivolous malpractice lawsuits against physicians and hospitals.
• Assures that every health care consumer has access to price information prior to treatment so they can make informed decisions about their care.
• Repeals financial bailouts (TARP) to ensure that the plan does not add to the deficit.

Originally posted by mhc_70
reply to post by StrangeBrew

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I guess you would rather Obama shove a health care plan down your throat in 3 or 4 weeks when he spent 6 months choosing a dog. If its such a good plan why is he and the rest of the government tools exempt from it?

But I digress, you have propped up so many strawmen that are completely off topic, Im not going to waste my time knocking them down.

Originally posted by mhc_70
reply to post by StrangeBrew

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Not sure which health care system your refferring to, but the majority of Americans, myself included, are happy with the health care we recieve.

Not to say there are not problems, but making everybody happy is simply impossible. One problem I see is peoples perspective of the costs. When you compare how much people spend annually on housing, cars or groceries, healthcare really is not that expensive.

Originally posted by 1 4M 7H3 1

Really? That's why 16% of our GDP is spent on healthcare, the most as % of GDP behind East Timor? Sorry, try again.

online.wsj.com...

As ObamaCare sinks in the polls, Democrats are complaining that the critics are distorting their proposals. But the truth is that the closer one inspects the actual details, the worse it all looks. Today’s example is the vast debt canyon that would open just beyond the 10-year window under which the bill is officially “scored” for cost purposes.

The press corps has noticed the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate that the House health bill increases the deficit by $239 billion over the next decade. But government-run health care won’t turn into a pumpkin after a decade. The underreported news is the new spending that will continue to increase well beyond the 10-year period that CBO examines, and that this blowout will overwhelm even the House Democrats’ huge tax increases, Medicare spending cuts and other “pay fors.”

In a July 26 letter, CBO director Douglas Elmendorf notes that the net costs of new spending will increase at more than 8% per year between 2019 and 2029, while new revenue would only grow at about 5%. “In sum,” he writes, “relative to current law, the proposal would probably generate substantial increases in federal budget deficits during the decade beyond the current 10-year budget window.” (The House bill has changed somewhat in the meantime, but not enough to alter these numbers much.)

That’s not our outlook. That’s what White House budget director Peter Orszag told the House Budget Committee in June. He added that “If you’re not falling off a cliff at the end of your projection window, that is your best assurance that the long-term trajectory is also stable.” The House bill falls off a cliff.

And the CBO score almost surely understates this deficit chasm because CBO uses static revenue analysis—assuming that higher taxes won’t change behavior. But long experience shows that higher rates rarely yield the revenues that they project.

As for the spending, when has a new entitlement ever come in under budget? True, the 2003 prescription drug benefit has, but those surprise savings derived from the private insurance design and competition that Democrats opposed and now want to kill. The better model for ObamaCare is the original estimate for Medicare spending when it was passed in 1965, and what has happened since.

That year, Congressional actuaries (CBO wasn’t around then) expected Medicare to cost $3.1 billion in 1970. In 1969, that estimate was pushed to $5 billion, and it really came in at $6.8 billion. House Ways and Means analysts estimated in 1967 that Medicare would cost $12 billion in 1990. They were off by a factor of 10—actual spending was $110 billion—even as its benefits coverage failed to keep pace with standards in the private market. Medicare spending in the first nine months of this fiscal year is $314 billion and growing by 10%. Some of this historical error is due to 1970s-era inflation, as well as advancements in care and technology. But Democrats also clearly underestimated—or lowballed—the public’s appetite for “free” health care.