Health Care Reform Should do ...what?

I think I would try to work on the income level. Like base the insurance on the income of the family. The ones that have a income, let a small amount go to their insurance. The ones who have no income, let them get the care they need. This is just a idea. Have a blessed day.

I would start by identifying the actual problems and working solutions to the problems found. It's called "problem solving" and The Central Committee need to find people who are skilled in it... since they obviously aren't. First of all, let's look at what the problem really is... Affordability: The price of medical care is far above what the forces of supply and demand dictate. This is largely because of 3rd party payment. Anytime you separate the people receiving goods and services from those paying for them, you create an artificial economy. I'm not saying that insurance shouldn't exist at all (although there are some great arguments to back that concept) I'm saying that it's not being used very efficiently. Our insurance companies get billed for everything. We are responsible for a co-payment, deductible and anything that isn't covered on our insurance policy, then our insurance companies pay the rest. How many unnecessary steps are there in that process? Time and money are being wasted on filing out, processing and delivering paperwork that doesn't generate anything productive. If we haven't reached our deductible yet, the insurance company isn't going to be paying anything anyway, so why is it that the bill still gets sent to them, then later, we get a letter from them telling us so... then we pay anyway. What should happen is, the facility hands us the bill. We pay the bill (either immediately or over time, depending on the arrangement made between the patient and the facility. The insurance company only gets the bills that they are going to pay. This accomplish at least 3 things. First, it cuts down on the millions of dollars a year of wasted, unproductive processes. Second, it requires the person receiving the service to take an interest in the payment. Most important though, because of the law of supply and demand, the price of medical goods and services would have to be adjusted to what the market will bear. Next... there is a gap between the being eligible for medicare/medicaid and the cost of insurance premiums. The expenses of those on medicare/medicaid are taken care of, as are the expenses of those on insurance. This leaves those in the "gap" unable to afford medical care. Again, we'll go back to the first rule of problem solving... identify the real problem, then work out solutions. There is no reason to bother with "reform" that takes care of the expenses of people whose expenses are already being taken care of. This is wasteful, unproductive and redundant. Lowering the overall cost would help, but it probably wouldn't solve the problem completely. Figuring out how many people fall in the "gap" would require a lot of research. First of all, we'd have to separate those who are eligible for either medicare, medicaid or private insurance, but simply choose not to participate. They are free to make that choice, so we shouldn't force it on them.. we also shouldn't pay for their choice. Once the true number is found, we can decide on a solution. The solution can also be realistic to the size of the actual problem. It could be something as simple as private companies seeing the untapped market and filling it. It could also be something like rewriting some of the medicare/medicaid requirements to include the gap. There is more, but this reply is too long already. :~D