Health Care Plans of President Obama & Members of Congress: Taking America Down the Road to a Single Payer Health Care System
By Sally C. Pipes, president & ceo, Pacific Research Institute and author of “The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care”
President Obama repeatedly has reassured the American people, “If you like your health insurance and your like your doctor, then nothing will change.” Polls show that 82 percent of Americans like their health care and rate it as good to excellent. On Obama’s plan, 55 percent of Americans think it is a bad plan and will lead to higher taxes, reduced quality, and rationed care. The ultimate result will be a complete government takeover of the American health care system—a Canadian style, single-payer system, “Medicare for All”.
Everyone agrees that the key goal for all of us is affordable, accessible, quality health care for all. There are two visions for achieving that goal—one that focuses on patient-centered solutions: empowering doctors and patients. The other focuses on increasing the role of government in our health care system from the 47 percent already in government’s hands by increased mandates, subsidies, and higher taxes. This is the vision that the President supports. The main pillars of his plan appear below:
- A new government health insurance plan, be it a “public option” or a “Non-profit Co-operative”.
- An employer "play-or-pay" mandate—either an 8 percent payroll tax on employers not providing insurance or a fee to be paid to the government to cover employees in the public plan.
- Controls on insurance companies that would prohibit denying coverage based on a pre-existing condition, cancelling a policy in the middle of an illness, and banning lifetime or annual caps on insurance payouts.
- A government-mandated package of benefits that will lead to higher costs
- A individual mandate with fines on those who don’t purchase insurance.
- A National Health Insurance Exchange extending federal regulatory powers over private insurance which will ultimately result in the “crowding out” of all private insurance
- Comparative Effectiveness--establishment of a Federal Coordinating Council that will make decisions on what procedures and treatments are cost-effective as compared to medically-effective, comparative effectiveness review, and other government intrusions into medical decision-making.
- A $900 billion plan that will be deficit neutral by: eliminating fraud and abuse in existing government programs—Medicare and Medicaid and increased taxes on all Americans.
- Setting up an Independent Medicare Advisory Commission (IMAC) to determine rates paid to doctors and hospitals under Medicare.
- Tort reform. Today, the practice of defensive medicine by doctors is estimated by PriceWaterhouseCoopers to cost $210 billion a year. It will be interesting to see if the President acts on this in a meaningful way.
SOLUTIONS:
- Patient-centered solutions that put doctors and patients in charge of their health care
- Change the tax code to eliminate the tax exclusion for individuals so they get the same tax advantage as those who have employer-based coverage.
- Offer refundable tax credits to individuals and families to help offset the purchase on insurance.
- Allow the purchase of insurance across state lines
- Reduce state mandates that add between 20-50 percent to the cost of premiums. In this way, young people would purchase insurance to cover catastrophic events.
- Tort reform
- Remove obstacles to the establishment of retail clinics.
Universal choice in health care will lead to universal coverage. With the solutions outline above, America will continue to have the best health care system in the world. If we have a takeover of our health care system by the government, where will the best doctors and where will we as patients go for our health care?
