Reforming Healthcare

The biggest problem with designing a health care system is focus. Most of the schemes both in the United States and around the world focus on fixing things for a small amount of people that may cost a tremendous amount and applying this system to everyone. This makes the scheme expensive. Medicare is focused on serving a growing portion of the country that accounts for about ¼ of the population but at any given time may have exorbitant expenditures. Medicaid covers about the same amount of people as Medicare, however, may contain some people who are chronically ill. The ACA covers less than 10% of the people in the country but a large percentage of those people would be considered Adversely Selected by insurance companies. The fact is that more than 50% of the people in the United States spend less than $250 per year in Health Care. Rather than focus on the anomalies, any health care scheme needs to focus on the majority of people and build in systems for those chronically ill or elderly. Quite simply put there are two main parts to Health Care, the service itself and the payment mechanism. In the US, the problem is not in the Health Care Service, it is expensive compared to the rest of the world, but the problem is in the payment mechanism. A great number of people do not have access to Health Care because of the cost. That is why a new system must be easy to pay for from a government standpoint and from the standpoint of the people who will be paying. Currently some people pay multiple times to get one plan. That is, if a person has an employer sponsored plan, they may pay what the company doesn't pay. Then the person still must pay the Medicare part of payroll tax. Then there is a component of income tax that goes to pay for Medicaid. A new Health Care Plan must simplify the payments for the people and standardize a plan or group of plans that will allow 100% of the people to control their Health Care and pay once. The most important part of this plan is to simplify how Health Care will be paid for and make it available for everyone without deductibles or copayments. Here is a summary of the plan out lining one of the options and the general layout of how the overall plan will function. This plan will use what is already in place for implementation and administration. The plan will be less expensive and everyone in the country will be covered. This plan will show how to cover 100% of the population of the US without raising Federal Income Taxes, destroying the Pharmaceutical Industry, the Medical Industry or Health Insurance industry. The plan will keep in place competition that will drive down costs. It will shift responsibility from the government to the private sector and eliminate Medicare and Medicaid. The first step is to build a basic plan that covers the “basics,” a doctor's visit every six months, a physical with blood work and the first $500 of prescriptions per year...