Saturday, August 22, 2009
If the nation is unwilling to support a government-run health care option, then Dr. Paul Toffel has an alternative reform plan. A clinical professor of medicine at the University of Southern California’s medical school, Toffel offers what he calls a “simple and inexpensive” plan that won’t require tax increases or reductions in medical quality.
First, the country should do away with the “50 state patchwork of private insurance programs” and allow insurers to go regional or even national to create wider competition—but with the caveat that companies would have to accept all individuals seeking coverage, pre-existing conditions and all.
Second, insurance companies should have to limit their fees to administration costs only, which comprise about 15% of medical dollars. This would end “excessive profits” going to boards of directors, CEO’s or shareholders. “The corporatization of health care was a bad idea,” writes Toffel.
Third, health insurance plans need to be portable, eventually leading the nation to dump employment-based health care.
And finally, any health care reform “should include meaningful tort reform that caps frivolous malpractice suits. Such a policy has seen great success in California for 34 years.”
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Health-Care Reform: An Original And Simple Proposal (by Paul Toffel, Huffington Post)
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