Here is what I had in my improving health care document about the government role:
What can Government Do
Here Government refers to the federal and state governments. The federal government needs to insure that state governments do not violate freedom of conscience rights of medical providers and personnel.
*]Permit Medical Providers to Choose what Services/Products they Provide. - The government should permit all medical providers including pharmacies to choose what services and products they will provide and which they will not. They should be able to exercise and abide by the own moral views. No government should force the offering of any product or service that the provider morally objects to.
*]Encourage Diversity in Health Care Plans - The government should permit and encourage health care plan offers to provide a wide variety of plans, including (1) plans designed for specific groups, such as people of the same moral bent, (2) options on how medical malpractive would be handled (ligitation, arbitators, oversight boards, etc., (3) the amount of coverage (comprehensive with low deductables, umbrella with Medical Savings Accounts, umbrella catastrophic coverage only, etc.), and (4) coverage exclusions (cosmetic surgery, contraceptives, abortive services, certain transplants, etc.).
*]For government provided health care, provide a diverse set of health care options - Revamp medicare, medicaid, and government employee insurance to include a wide diversity of health care plans. including some that encourage consumers to better manage the cost of their health care.
*]Encourage Diversity in Health Care Oversight - Government should permit multiple health care oversight organizations to monitor and guide health care. This should allow for faith-based assocations as well as secular ones. This would medical organizations that want to offer a particular flavor of health care to be assocated with and monitored by oversight organizations that share their moral views.
*]Transform Medicaid into two parts, (1) a Tragic Care Umbrella Plan, and (2) a Preventative Health Care Plan - This transformation will permit Preventative Care for poor children and the disabled while covering catastrophic medical problems for those poor not covered by employer plans or who cannot afford their part of their health care coverage. The Tragic Care Umbrella Plan should be resistive in what in covers and where and should only address situation where the life of the person is at severe risk. Medicaid for citizens should have better coverage than Medicaid for resident aliens, which should be much better than Medicaid for alien visitors, which in turn should be far better than that for illegal aliens.
*]Permit buy-in into State and Federal Health Care Plans - Residents and workers in a state should be able to buy into State health care plans. Likewise, residents and legal workers in the United States should be able to buy into Federal health care plans. Business should be able to buy into state and federal plans where their employees live and work. All federal and state plans should be available to be bought into with possible subsidies for low-income workers.
*]Define that patients own their medical records and require all providers to make them available to be sent to other medical providers at patient requests and securly and confidentially for government investigations of wrong doing. - Currently medical records are not shared well, no electronic exchange standard for them exist, nor are most automated. The government should encourage the development of an electronic medical record exchange standard, the use of personal medical record repostiories that individuals could carry (such as on their keychains). Develop laws to prevent illegal access and use of medical records.
*]Promote Better Handling of Pre-Existing Conditions - The government should allow the cost of pre-existing conditions to be spread out among all health plan providers for the last few years.
*]Require Pharmecutical Companies to license at a reasonable fee, patented products to promote competition. - This license should consider the cost of the research in the products, but not the advertising or marketing costs of the products.
*]Promote flexibility in Medical Savings Accounts (MSA) - MSA’s should be flexible and allowed to cover families and groups, be inheritable, and be completely tax-free. The government should encourage employers to fund them for their employees.
*]Promote the establishment of Retirement Health Care Accounts (RHCA) - RHCA’s are accounts funding future health care coverage at retirement. At the time of retirement, the value of the account should be equated into a level of contribution towards health care coverage. 40 years of contributions to the account by employers should yield a low-copay full health coverage plan. These should be tax-free and the federal government should encourage private insurers to create and manage them.
*]Permit Full Deductability for all medical expenses - All medical expenses, including dental and optical, should be non taxable.
*]Establish Standards for Health Care Facilities - There should be many classes of health care facilities based on the type of care provided, the quality of care provided, and the ability to respond to unforeseen medical problems. Not every location needs to be able to handle all emergencies, but should have plans on how to address the ones likely to occur (The plans can include using another facility to provide it). There should be diversity of classifications for locations providing similar services.
*]Establish Heavy Penalties for Fraud - There should be heavy penalities for fraud that include personal liability for fraud committed even on behalf of a business. In general, anyone caught defrauding the Federal government should be required to pay the government at least 10 times the amount of fraud, serve prison time, and be watched carefully from there on. It would be beneficial if the same sort of penalities could apply to any fraud within the medical community.
*]Provide Caps on medical Litigation Awards - Some litigation awards are way out of proportion to the damage done. Caps on awards should be established to better manage the cost of malpractive insurance. Medical personnel who regularly perform medicine poorly should be resisted in what they can do in the professions.
*]Establish a government assistance repayment tax - see the separate webpage describing the Government Assistance Repayment Tax.
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