A HEALTH CARE PLAN THAT WILL WORK

The Obamacare plan is very flawed, because it will cause health care costs and taxes to skyrocket. Here is an alternate plan that should keep health care costs low and provide better care for the poor.

OBAMA IS AN IDIOT

Obamacare is guaranteed to raise health care costs more than anything else. Here is what is wrong with it:

  1. It is based on insurance. Insurance raises health care prices by taking supply and demand pricing out of the market.
  2. There is nothing to control how much doctors and medical facilities charge. There are cases where the doctor charges $75 and the medical facility charges $600 per office visit. Medical prices are outrageous.
  3. The plan requires people to buy health insurance, whether they can pay for it or not. This raises the price of health insurance. And any government subsidy for those unable to afford health insurance probably has the typical Democrat greed of requiring people to spend down such assets as an owned home, life insurance, and pension accounts, leaving these people destitute.
  4. The only reason Democrats want this is it is egalitarian. But egalitarianism doesn't pay the bills.

Doctors love this plan, because it makes them even richer. Obviously, they contributed to get this. Democrats usually abhor the rich.

Obamacare does not stand up to economic analysis. This plan is destined to fail, bankrupting the economy in the process.

The US will never come out of recession as long as this plan is law.

 

THE MEDICAL SCAM

The medical profession is running a greedy scam to take as much money as they can:

  1. They won't quote prices before doing the work.
  2. They always find ways to tack on more charges.
  3. Some equipment manufacturers demand royalty payments for each use of the equipment.
  4. They charge for an entire box of supplies, even though only a few items were used.
  5. Doctors band together in monopolistic cartels, so they can charge more.
  6. They charge more for uninsured patients than they do for insured patients.
  7. They practice featherbedding - Several people now do what the doctor himself used to do.
  8. They charge for use of the building.
  9. They limit the number of doctors through the AMA, so they can charge higher fees.
  10. They charge amounts several times a monthly salary, and expect to be paid immediately.

All of these activities are wrong. They must be investigated and abolished.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Examples of emergency symptoms that were not emergencies:

  1. A head injury that sounded to the patient like bone breaking, but was actually scraping on the skull.
  2. Symptoms of emergency appendicitis that turned out to be kidney stones.
  3. An accident victim thought he was more severely injured because he was soaked in someone else's blood.
  4. A woman driving in a bad neighborhood heard a loud bang and something hit her head. She reached up and felt something gooey on the back of her head. She thought she had been shot, so she drove herself to the emergency room.
    (A can of frozen biscuit dough on the back seat was heated by the sun. It burst, pelting her head with sticky dough.)

 
 
 

INSURANCE VS LOW-COST CLINICS

The economic effects of insurance, compared with the effects of subsidized clinics:

  1. Insurance lets doctors set a high "going rate." This raises the price of medicine.
  2. Subsidized clinics provide competition, bringing the price of medicine down.
  3. Insurance companies demand a volume discount, raising prices for the uninsured.
  4. Subsidized clinics pay doctors more than they charge, lowering the price for the uninsured.
  5. Doctors band together in monopolistic cartels, so they can charge insurance companies more.
  6. Subsidized clinics remove the monopoly effects of doctor cartels.
  7. Insurance lets clinics charge for use of the building. Subsidized clinics don't do this.

Insurance always raises the price of medicine. Low-cost clinics always lower it.

 

The practice of making employees get doctor statements is wrong, because:

  1. If the employee is too sick to work, he is too sick to drive to the doctor.
  2. By the time of the employee's appointment, the disease has often already ended.
  3. It raises medical costs for the patient.
  4. It raises medical costs for the insurer.
  5. It raises the overall price of medicine by creating excess demand.
  6. It overloads the doctor with needless office visits for cases where the doctor can do nothing (e.g. influenza).
  7. Most doctors hate this waste of their time.

The following be hereby enacted to prevent high health care costs:

  1. Health Insurance
    1. Health insurance shall be allowed to cover the following rare events:
      1. Catastrophic expenses
      2. Convalescent care
      3. Long term care
      4. Terminal care
    2. Health insurance shall not cover the following:
      1. Routine checkups and care
      2. Immunizations
      3. Unnecessary medicine, including:
        1. Elective cosmetic surgery
        2. Fertility treatments
        3. Artificial Insemination
        4. Sex change
        5. Tattoo removal
      4. Experimental treatments
      5. Treatments required by any law (government shall pay for those)
      6. Accidents caused by others (accident insurance covers this)
    3. No person shall ever be required to have health insurance.
  2. Health care costs
    1. Medical doctors, hospitals, and other medical care providers (herein referred to as "providers") shall be subject to the following provisions:
      1. Medical bills:
        1. Providers charging large amounts of money shall be required to wait for the money until the patient can afford to make payments. They shall never demand a large lump sum payment.
        2. Providers shall not charge by the hour.
        3. Providers shall set and disclose the fee before doing the work.
        4. Providers shall not collect information about payment methods until after the medical work has been done.
        5. If something unexpected develops during a procedure, providers shall not charge more as a result.
        6. Providers shall not charge interest on bills that are paid late.
        7. Providers shall not use collection agencies to force payment of late bills.
        8. Courts shall not require payments large enough that they would cause rents, mortgages, utility bills, taxes, and bills for other necessities to go unpaid.
        9. Nobody's house or belongings shall be taken away to satisfy medical bills.
        10. Providers shall not band together into companies that, in a given locality, are effectively monopolies.
        11. In cases of accident, providers shall not be so in a hurry to be paid that they don't allow time for accident insurance adjusters to investigate the accident.
        12. Providers shall not charge for lifesaving procedures performed at the scene of an emergency.
        13. Technicians shall be salaried employees of the provider. They shall not issue their own bills for services.
        14. Hospitals and clinics shall employ salaried doctors. These doctors shall not issue their own bills for services.
        15. Providers shall not take on so many regular patients that a patient must wait more than one day to get an appointment.
      2. No provider shall engage in any kind of bill padding, including the following:
        1. Charging extra for the cost of extra materials or time needed to prevent the spread of AIDS or other dangerous diseases, unless the patient is known to have such a disease.
        2. Charging for supplies brought into or kept in an examining room or a patient room, and that were never used.
        3. Charging for an entire container of supplies when only a small portion of the contents was used.
        4. Charging for procedures that were unnecessary for the treatment given.
        5. Charging for procedures the patient did not authorize.
        6. Charging for procedures a medical person did that the patient could have done, but was not allowed to do.
        7. Charging for measures taken to prevent unlikely accidents that would cause the patient to sue the provider. Prevention of the lawsuit pays for itself.
        8. Charging royalty fees for the use of equipment.
        9. Charging for consulting with another provider when the provider is unsure what to do.
      3. Emergency rooms and emergency response crews:
        1. Emergency rooms shall be allowed to charge rates twice the normal rate for patients who use the emergency room for non-emergency medicine. But the following shall be exempted from the double charge:
          1. Symptoms that indicate emergency situations that, upon medical investigation, are determined to not be actual emergencies
          2. Cases where a doctor sent a patient to the emergency room as a result of a misdiagnosis
          3. Cases where a patient was given a wrong treatment by a doctor or pharmacist
          4. When a patient is unconscious or delirious, and emergency responders take him to the emergency room
          5. When a patient is unconscious or delirious, and a well-meaning bystander takes him to the emergency room
          6. Cases where a patient is under arrest and must be monitored by police
        2. Doctors in emergency rooms shall be salaried employees. They shall not issue their own bills for services.
        3. Technicians in emergency rooms shall be salaried employees. They shall not issue their own bills for services.
        4. A non-emergency clinic with walk-in service shall be located next to each emergency room.
        5. All emergency responders and vehicles shall be funded by local governments having jurisdiction.
          1. Emergency responders shall not charge for emergency runs.
          2. Emergency responders shall charge for all deliberate false alarms.
          3. An emergency run called in by a well-meaning bystander who sees or hears things that make him think an emergency is taking place when no emergency exists shall not incur a charge. This is being safe, rather than sorry.
  3. Provisions for the poor:
    1. Health care subsidies for the poor and elderly shall not be paid for through any form of health insurance.
    2. Government shall provide health care for the poor and elderly through one of or more of the following methods:
      1. Government provides free or very-low-cost clinics for all comers to use.
      2. Providers are paid by government to staff free or low-cost clinics.
      3. Providers are given large tax breaks for time spent volunteering in free or low-cost clinics.
      4. Hospitals and providers are given tax breaks for providing low-cost surgery.
    3. The following shall be done to keep health care prices low:
      1. Providers shall be kept in competition with each other to keep prices down. Monopolies shall be broken up.
      2. All patents and copyrights shall have compulsory licensing at mechanical rates. This keeps prices for pharmaceuticals and medical devices low.
      3. It shall be unlawful for suppliers of medical technology to charge royalty fees for the operation of medical equipment, either on a time basis or on a per-use basis.
      4. The Food and Drug Administration shall not remove approval of any drug or medical device just because a business requests the removal. Approval must not be removed unless the drug or device is found to be unsafe when properly used. The fact that is has a lower effectiveness than another drug or device shall not be a reason to remove approval. (Most approval removal requests are attempts to create monopoly situations.)
      5. All employers shall be prohibited from demanding a doctor's statement as proof the employee missed work because he was really sick.
      6. Quotas shall be prohibited in medical education and licensing:
        1. All qualified applicants shall be admitted to medical schools.
        2. All qualified medical students shall be graduated.
        3. All qualified graduates shall be given medical licenses.
        4. Qualifying standards shall not be tightened to reduce the number of medical students, graduates, or licensed providers.
      7. Medical standards shall not be tightened for the purpose of reducing the number of providers.
      8. Governments shall not tighten medical standards to reduce the probability of death.
      9. Medical sanctioning bodies shall not use quotas or do anything else to reduce the number of providers.
      10. College shall be paid for by grants, not loans.
      11. Malpractice juries shall not award damages larger than the actual costs of medicine needed to undo the effects of malpractice, unless gross negligence or actual malice is proved.
      12. Malpractice insurance shall recompense only the actual costs of medicine needed to undo the effects of malpractice. It shall not cover any treble damages or punitive damages awarded due to gross negligence or malice.