Virginia Tomorrow

Now that President Obama has agreed to meet with Republican and Democrat Congressional leaders on ideas for health care reform, the following principles of health care reform should be seriously considered:
• Make quality health care coverage affordable, accessible, and portable for every American, regardless of pre-existing health conditions;
• Enact medical liability reforms to include requiring individuals filing frivolous lawsuits to bear 100% of all costs associated with such lawsuits and imposing a reasonable and responsible limit on malpractice awards;
• Utilize Health Information Technology to reduce the cost of healthcare paperwork and medical mistakes;
• Make basic, primary health insurance premium payments 100% tax deductible for individuals and businesses;
• Make the cost of long-term care insurance policies 100% tax deductible;
• More aggressively encourage tax-free, health savings accounts to promote personal responsibility for health care;
• Allow for purchase of health insurance across state lines;
• Impose a life-time personal, out-of-pocket health care expenditure limit;
• Make major public investments in community health centers, free clinics, and programs like the Virginia Cares Uninsured Program;
• Allow hospital emergency rooms to immediately divert non-emergency patients to an on-site, non-emergency primary care clinic;
• Initiate health care scholarship grant (not loan) programs for family practice, general practitioner doctors, nurses, and other frontline health care providers;
• Implement Medicare and Medicaid provider reimbursement levels at no less than 85% of the cost for health care services; and
• Allow at least an 85% tax credit for documented, provider indigent (non-payment) care costs.
While the implementation of these basic health care reform principles will not resolve all of the issues related to the rising costs of American health care, they should promote the expansion of overall access to health care to millions of more Americans, provide incentives for individuals to be more responsible for their own health care, and contain the overall cost to government for health care over the long-term.