Health Care

By Joshua C. Quinter

We Should Address the Real Problem - Cost.

(1) Allow businesses and individuals to purchase health insurance across state lines. By introducing competition back into the system, health insurance providers will be forced to deliver a better product for a better price.

(2) Put more power in the hands of consumers by allowing them to choose what they want covered and what they do not want covered. If we eliminate government mandates that require health insurance companies to provide coverage for diseases and other issues that we can determine a person will not get with current technology, insurers no will no longer need to charge premium for them and prices will come down.

(3) Permit responsible individuals who purchase health insurance on their own the same tax credit businesses get. By doing so, we would make it less expensive and encourage individuals to purchase health insurance. This also results in personally owned and portable health insurance for the consumer.

(4) Allow small businesses to band together to purchase health insurance. By using health insurance pooling arrangements, large groups buying health insurance have a better opportunity to negotiate a lower price.

(5) Address the problem of frivolous lawsuits so that doctors, nurses, and health care providers can practice medicine without looking over their shoulders. Defensive medicine leads to more tests that cost money and frivolous malpractice suits drive up the cost of medicine by raising malpractice insurance.

Each of these steps is easy to accomplish, costs little to nothing, and would immediately begin to impact the cost of health insurance premiums. These are the answers to our problem, not another federal bureaucracy and less choice.