Surgical Diversions » politics

Baby Steps to Healthcare Reform

Andy — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:46:10 +0000

Since I’m sure all members of Congress will have the opportunity to read and comprehend the entirety of whatever is the current healthcare legislation the following small steps to improve the situation will be meaningless. I have 3 simple proposals that could fit on a single page. Heck, it fits in a single post.

Eliminate pre-existing conditions as a reason to deny insurance.
Allow insurance companies to sell in any market in the US.
Malpractice reform — Loser Pays

I think the first 2 are self evident so lets focus for a moment on the third.

Loser Pays

What I mean is that all legal fees will be paid by the losing party to the litigation. This would include naming a doctor in a med mal suit and then dropping them from the suit.

You see, just because a doctor gets dropped from a suit doesn’t mean that his malpractice carrier doesn’t incur costs. In fact, it’s usually about $20K to defend a suit that is dropped.

Interestingly, anytime a doc is dropped from a suit, they must sign a release stating that they will not sue the plaintiff’s attorney. I once tried not to sign this but my lawyer told me he’d never seen it done before.

Yeah, I know, it doesn’t solve many of the problems facing our healthcare industry. But I bet it would improve the situation with minimal effort.

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Nationalized Healthcare and the Free Market

Andy — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:33:06 +0000

Nationalized/Universal healthcare will happen. Obama ran on it and he intends to deliver. What’s more, I can see a manner in which the country will flock to it under the current free market insurance system.

First, the federal government will expand Medicaid to cover the unemployed and uninsured. Second, the Congress will pass some law that mandates employers to provide health insurance for not only full-time employees, but part-time employees too.

Oh, by the way, the federal government will also make available a government-sponsored insurance plan to compete with the other available HMO and PPO choices. Of course the government plan will cost you (the employer) 40-50% less than the next most expensive plan.

You (the employer) will offer your employees the government plan as per the terms of the new law and they (the employees) will have the option of spending almost twice as much for a different commercial plan. I don’t really expect many employees to avail themselves of the opportunity to spend more money for little perceived increase in services.

Soon 80-90% of the country will be on the government plan and physicians and hospitals will effectively have a single payor.

Welcome to nationalized/universal healthcare.

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Election Postmortem

Andy — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:44:49 +0000

Barack Obama is the POTUS-Elect. Congrats. I’m so glad it was decisive and isn’t going to have lawyers involved. I have to say I called this in November, 2007 and wrote about Obama four years ago. I wish him all the best our country needs it’s best and brightest working together.

Prop. 8 in my home state of California hasn’t yet been decided officially but with 95% of the precincts reporting it is passing by 4%. Personally, I’m glad the citizens got to vote this issue and the legality isn’t going to be decided by a 4 judges who disagreed with a similar ballot measure from 2000 that passed with about 61% of the vote.

Back to your regular unscheduled programming.

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Washington Priorities

Andy — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 16:23:48 +0000

The current financial meltdown is the news of the day and the politicos in Washington are trying to fix/solve the problem.

Why is it then that the solution is 400+ pages long and contains crap like money for wooden arrow makers and wool studies?

Is Washington so riddled with ADD that they can’t keep their eye on the ball and produce legislation that does only ONE thing?

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McCain Campain on Hold??

Andy — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:20:58 +0000

This is joke right? Who advises these people.

On the other hand, my congratulations go out to President Obama.

Addendum:
This political stunt only works for McCain if he blows up any existing plan supported by the Dems (done) and his proposed plan gets instituted and actually works.

Side note:
The Dems could, in theory, pass whatever plan they want without Republican support, GWB already said he’d sign it.

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Biden VEEP??

Andy — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 19:45:53 +0000

Joe Biden the 6-term Senator from Delware is Obama’s choice for VEEP. I’m wondering how this old guard Washington insider adds to Obama’s message of change. Personally I think Bill Richardson would have been a better choice. Adds the foreign policy cred without all of Biden’s baggage. No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another [...] No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.