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Old 10-29-2006, 08:32 AM   #20 (permalink)
ASU2003
immoral minority
 
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Location: Back in Ohio
http://www.lp.org/issues/healthcare.shtml

Quote:
As recently as the 1960s, low-cost health insurance was available to virtually everyone in America - including people with existing medical problems. Doctors made house calls. A hospital stay cost only a few days' pay. Charity hospitals were available to take care of families who could not afford to pay for healthcare.

Since then the federal government has increasingly intervened through Medicare, Medicaid, the HMO Act and tens of thousands of regulations on doctors, hospitals and health-insurance companies.

Today, more than 50 percent of all healthcare dollars are spent by the government.

Health insurance costs are skyrocketing. Government health programs are heading for bankruptcy. Politicians continue to pile on the regulations.

The Libertarian Party knows the only healthcare reforms that will make a real difference are those that are draw on the strength of the free market.

The Libertarian Party will work towards the following:

1. Establish Medical Saving Accounts.

Under this program, you could deposit tax-free money into a Medical Savings Account (MSA). Whenever you need the money to pay medical bills, you will be able to withdraw it. For individuals without an MSA, the Libertarian Party will work to make all healthcare expenditures 100 percent tax deductible.

2. Deregulate the healthcare industry.

We should repeal all government policies that increase health costs and decrease the availability of medical services. For example, every state has laws that mandate coverage of specific disabilities and diseases. These laws reduce consumer choice and increase the cost of health insurance. By making insurance more expensive, mandated benefits increase the number of uninsured American workers.

3. Remove barriers to safe, affordable medicines.

We should replace harmful government agencies like the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) with more agile, free-market alternatives. The mission of the FDA is to protect us from unsafe medicines. In fact, the FDA has driven up healthcare costs and deprived millions of Americans of much-needed treatments. For example, during a 10-year delay in approving Propanolol Propranolol (a heart medication for treating angina and hypertension), approximately 100,000 people died who could have been treated with this lifesaving drug. Bureaucratic roadblocks kill sick Americans.
Here is plan from the LP website. They don't talk about private health insurance companies or why this plan would be better than the current system. Just that taxpayers wouldn't have to pay for people to get medical treatment, just it should be done by private charity hospitals, and you can pay for healthcare with money that is tax deductible.

And the MSA they are talking about would but 100% of the cost of health care onto the patient. There is no way the American people would ever go for that. Without the insurance component, you could easily face tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills (that they want to reduce in price somehow).

In step two they talk about deregulating the healthcare insurance groups. This would allow health insurance companies to compete across state lines, and remove benefits or add benefits as the insurance companies want. The consumers would be in control of picking what health insurance level they need and want they want covered. Health insurance companies would be free to raise rates on unhealthy people just like the car insurance drivers do on bad drivers. The companies can offer incentives to get people healthy (mine right now offers to pay 10% of my gym membership). And HRAs and HSAs are the smart way to allow consumers a choice in how they spend their health care dollars, or you can save them and use them later. If things get really bad for you and the health care bills rack up, it is the health insurance company that would be responsible for the bill (not the patient or government). The MSA I had two years ago went to $0 after each year, even if I didn't spend the money, but I would hope they would get rid of that limitation.

The third point is right, the FDA is blocking doctors and patients from making the decisions that might work for them. Drug companies would still want to get independent drug testing done to remove the experimental label from their drug. But instead of having a government body monitor it, the drug companies could pay universities that have set up competing drug testing and approval bodies. The companies wouldn't want to receive any bad press from selling counterfeit drugs (or allowing anyone else to sell them to their pharmacies), or drugs that didn't work as advertised.

But they really need to come up with a full health insurance plan that is fair and can be understood by the American people. The problem is that no one has come up with a perfect health care system yet.
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