Any health care plan must have more than a political foundation and should parallel the astounding success of the American economy rooted in our Founding Principles. Any program dominated by the Federal government and adding up to $4 in new taxes and new national debt for every $1 of care, fails the patient, taxpayers, health care professionals, and the health of our nation.
A summary of a complete health care plan that can be easily fleshed out in 20 to 100 pages.
1) Mandates. All Federal requirements for inclusion in health care policies are hereby repealed.
2) The decision to purchase health insurance is an individual choice; no citizen shall be compelled to purchase health insurance.
3) Employers have a choice to provide health insurance as part of employee benefit programs.
4) The cost of health care insurance benefits provided shall be exempt from taxation of any kind.
5) The provision of health insurance is a commercial activity, including health savings accounts to be managed by the individual states with these exceptions:
a) Reciprocity. Each state must recognize insurance policies purchased in other states.
b) Citizens/residents of any state may purchase health insurance in any state.
c) No process or procedure governing health insurance shall be regulated by the Federal Government.
6) Consumers may choose health care insurance a la carte costed-out on an individual basis.
7) Types of health insurance policies shall include:
a) Minimal insurance to cover emergency medical treatment.
b) Well care plus emergency medical care.
c) Basic general plans to cover well care, emergency medical care and routine ongoing medical treatments including doctor office visits, testing, and follow up care.
d) Insurance companies may offer limited, temporary insurance at the catastrophic care level.
8) The regulatory process is a state, not a Federal responsibility
9) Federal funding of medical care cannot efficiently, compassionately or economically accomplish optimum care of the individual, federal funding of health care shall be prohibited except as a last resort under major medical and catastrophic care.
10) All health care-health service providers shall provide lifesaving treatments in emergency situations whether the patient has health insurance or not.
11) The patient shall be fully responsible to pay for compensating the health care provider for services rendered. However, this provision does not prohibit health care providers from offering “charity care” and/or deferred/reduced payment for such services based on patient need.
12) Religious and fraternal institutions will not be discouraged from covering such treatment costs, including paying for such services to a third party provider.
13) Medical professionals and institutions along with family or community care givers may not be prohibited from providing pro bono services to the helpless and indigent.
14) Tort Reform – Americans longing to return to excellence, accessibility, and affordability in health care should encourage their state to emulate the positive effects tort reform has on malpractice liability in the state of Texas.
15) Individuals and families benefiting from emergency and healing care paid by others will be encouraged/required to compensate or “pay it forward” to the benefit of others in a like situation.
16) Matters of Faith – No health care provider, and no resident of the United States shall be compelled to provide services or to participate in a health care program if such participation would violate his or her beliefs.
17) No individual or institution shall be required to violate their respect for or belief in the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death.
18) Alternatives to commercial health insurance – Communal, religious affiliated, specialized group, or collective assurance associations may develop and operate membership health care programs, as allowed by laws of the state wherein formed. These plans shall have the same force and full reciprocity among the States.
Medical care functions best with a philosophy of love and responsibility for the welfare of others.
“it will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be to-morrow.”
–James Madison, Federalist No. 62, 1788
Does the 2,700 page Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and its tens of thousands of pages of rules and regulations fit this description?
Prepared by Gerald V. Todd and James Coles III with valued help from the “Off-Line” Group wildvortex@icloud,com
