Author: Stuart Shapiro
The reform of healthcare has been one of America’s biggest political challenges for over 40 years. The attempt to dissolve by Clinton’s administration in the early 1990s was abandoned after it did not get wide support. Without a real compromise – really soon – Obama’s plan is in the face of a similar fate.
If Ted Kennedy lived, and if the political Tsunami last week in Massachusetts happened elsewhere, I could imagine a conversation that he could have with the Republicans of Orrin Hatch and John McCain at the Senate gym. (As a conscious adviser to Kennedy, I speak from experience.) “John, Orrin, we have a mess on our hands with health care reform,” said Kennedy. “Let’s see what we can do to fix it for the American people.”
Before they left the gym, they would agree that everyone would like to block insurance companies from refusing to insure people with existing diseases. Hatch and McCain would add that there must be a reform of torture, and Kennedy would say that common relationships should be a goal. Then they would return to their offices and tell their employees: “Repair it.”
Their compromise would look something like this:
Universal health care would be preserved as a goal that will be gradual over time, because the country can afford it. It would expand with specific factors related to costs and care, starting with children and lasting gradually until all groups are covered by insurance.
Insurance companies would be obliged to cover each launched group, and members of each group would be legally obliged to obtain insurance with specific minimum benefits and if necessary subsidies. This would ask for legislators who want insurance companies to stop refusing to protect people with existing diseases, as well as insurers who want a mandate in exchange for changing current practices. For now, Kennedy will give up the public option, but it can be on the table again if the costs are not controlled.
There would be real cost control. (There is a very low cost control in the current accounts, and their expected cost of about $ 1 trillion within 10 years will not fall significantly than the actual amount.) Cost control would include strict schedules of prescription fees, doctors and hospitals, based on the quality of care, not the number of procedures. New treatments, procedures and medicines would not be covered until they show that they have more than marginal benefits. Kennedy would demand, and Hatch and McCain would agree, the wide exploit of generic drugs and enabling protected import of drugs.
Medicare would not be cut. Intelligent veterans politicians understand that this cannot be, especially considering the gross medicid underfunding.
Finally a reform of torture will take place. Care standards, if observed, should protect suppliers against frivolous lawsuits. Adoption for abuse and defense medicine have a direct impact on the operating costs of the service providers, which were estimated at $ 200 billion a year. However, 1000-page proposals for reforms in the Chamber and Senate are mute in this matter, as is the White House and the entire Democratic Party. This is not only a mistake with huge financial proportions, but also a strategic error. In addition to the savings reform, it can generate, it can also be one of the missing links that introduce republican legislators on board.
Unfortunately, Kennedy is dead to assist the broker such a compromise. Considering this and the result in Massachusetts, President Obama should honor Kennedy, doing what he would do to realize his long -term dream of reforming healthcare.
The president said that he wants the monumental reform of healthcare to be one of the determining the achievements of his administration. But if he does not compromise now, the problem may become his first vital failure, just like for Bill Clinton.
Kennedy thought miniature steps forward were better than a step back. Obama should follow his footsteps.
