It seems that we are not going to get serious healthcare reform.
We have given in about the single payer, public option, the Medicare buy-in, and almost everything in between. The problem now seems to be that we are not dealing with cost containment, especially the costs of insurance, and somehow mandates were not tied to a public plan to compete and offer a lower cost option. We are left with all sorts of structure that depended on the foundation of a public plan to compete with private insurers, including exchanges, mandates, subsidies. We have pretty much banned insurance plans from covering abortion.
Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater, we are told.
Well, let's give the baby a name: insurance regulation.
Let's take out everything that depended on a public plan of one sort or another. We changed already from calling it health care reform to calling it health insurance reform. Let's take that further and call it a bill for regulating health insurance companies. Let's take away the monopoly exemption, create a fair marketplace, and forbid the worst practices of private health insurance industries.
Let's do away with annual and lifetime caps on payments, and cap out-of-pocket expenses, including deductibles and co-pays. Let's set up the minimum care that all plans must cover for all consumers. Let's forbid denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, rescission in all cases except intentional fraud, and denial of any treatment found to be necessary by two or three doctors. Let's take away exemptions for companies that self-insure, mandate proportional coverage for parttime employees, and figure out a way for small businesses to access insurance affordably. And let's set up an adequate supervisory body.
That would be a bill worth passing. It is less ambitious than the original plan, but it does something worth doing.
Then we can start dealing with restructuring the system.