Windly Queef
22-02-2005, 20:40
Tell me...why are we so concerned with Social Security, when Medicare is looking to be an extreme fiscal problem?
"Looking more than 75 years in the future, saving estimates that the nation faces a 62 trillion unfunded liability for Medicare--versus a 12 trillion gap for Social Security.
Yet, he said lawmakers created a prescription drug benefit that added nearly 17 trillion in future IOU's to that 62 trillion shortfall."
Solutions:
HOW WE CAN HAVE AFFORDABLE MEDICAL CARE
Fortunately, we can reduce your medical costs up to 75% without a government takeover. The solution is to empower you - not the government or insurance companies. Here are five ways:
1. Restore Tax Equity. Unfair tax laws are a major reason why few of us can afford to buy medical insurance outside of our jobs. Your employer pays for health insurance with pre-tax dollars. But you have to pay with what's left of your paycheck after taxes have been deducted. It can cost you twice as much to buy medical insurance as it does your employer.
The solution: Change the tax laws so health insurance is 100% tax-deductible for you. You also should be able to form insurance-purchasing pools with others, further cutting your costs. These changes will also make your medical insurance completely transportable between jobs.
2. Individual Medical Savings Accounts. If someone suggested that we should triple the cost of your auto insurance so it would cover oil changes and tune-ups as well as major repairs, you'd probably tell them they were crazy. But that's exactly what we've done with medical insurance.
It now costs $50 for an insurance company to process a claim for a routine $50 visit to a doctor's office, doubling the cost. You are unaware of this cost because it's hidden in your medical premiums. The solution is to create 100% tax-deductible, interest-bearing individual Medical Savings Accounts. You or your employer would put $1,000-$2,000 into a Medisave Account each year for routine medical expenses. That's your money, to spend as you choose on basic medical expenses.
Because it's your money, you'd have an incentive to comparison shop and economize in selecting a doctor, deciding on tests and treatments. In Indiana, the Golden Rule Insurance Company has reduced their medical costs by 64% since setting up Medical Savings Accounts for their employees a few years ago - and their employees love them for it.
http://www.forhealthfreedom.org/Publications/HealthIns/MSAs.html
3. Replace the FDA with private certification. There is no excuse for the Food and Drug Administration forcing manufacturers to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to prove the safety and efficacy of drugs used for decades in Europe. There is no excuse for allowing the FDA to ban high-potency vitamins (as it's trying to do) or to mount armed raids on alternative medical practitioners (over 200 such raids were staged in 1993). Private companies can certify the safety of drugs at a fraction of the cost of the FDA. Then it should be your decision (in consultation with your doctor) - not the government's - to decide what drugs to use.
4. Privatize Medicare and Medicaid. Charitable aid for the poor is certainly desirable, but as 80% of doctors agree, Medicare and Medicaid is intrusive and often harms patients' health. Paperwork requirements alone are causing many doctors to quit medicine.
Medicare is too expensive, too bureaucratic, and is impoverishing young workers. It's also on the verge of bankruptcy. What's the alternative? For the poor, provide voluntary charitable aid so they can purchase private medical insurance - saving us all Medicare's enormous bureaucratic cost and the horrendous book-keeping requirements (and legal threats) imposed upon doctors and insurers.
5. Curtail Damage Awards. Outrageous malpractice awards are a major cause of escalating medical premiums. Our laws, judges, and juries must distinguish between true negligence, which should be legally actionable, and "acts of God" and human imperfection, which are unavoidable.
"Looking more than 75 years in the future, saving estimates that the nation faces a 62 trillion unfunded liability for Medicare--versus a 12 trillion gap for Social Security.
Yet, he said lawmakers created a prescription drug benefit that added nearly 17 trillion in future IOU's to that 62 trillion shortfall."
Solutions:
HOW WE CAN HAVE AFFORDABLE MEDICAL CARE
Fortunately, we can reduce your medical costs up to 75% without a government takeover. The solution is to empower you - not the government or insurance companies. Here are five ways:
1. Restore Tax Equity. Unfair tax laws are a major reason why few of us can afford to buy medical insurance outside of our jobs. Your employer pays for health insurance with pre-tax dollars. But you have to pay with what's left of your paycheck after taxes have been deducted. It can cost you twice as much to buy medical insurance as it does your employer.
The solution: Change the tax laws so health insurance is 100% tax-deductible for you. You also should be able to form insurance-purchasing pools with others, further cutting your costs. These changes will also make your medical insurance completely transportable between jobs.
2. Individual Medical Savings Accounts. If someone suggested that we should triple the cost of your auto insurance so it would cover oil changes and tune-ups as well as major repairs, you'd probably tell them they were crazy. But that's exactly what we've done with medical insurance.
It now costs $50 for an insurance company to process a claim for a routine $50 visit to a doctor's office, doubling the cost. You are unaware of this cost because it's hidden in your medical premiums. The solution is to create 100% tax-deductible, interest-bearing individual Medical Savings Accounts. You or your employer would put $1,000-$2,000 into a Medisave Account each year for routine medical expenses. That's your money, to spend as you choose on basic medical expenses.
Because it's your money, you'd have an incentive to comparison shop and economize in selecting a doctor, deciding on tests and treatments. In Indiana, the Golden Rule Insurance Company has reduced their medical costs by 64% since setting up Medical Savings Accounts for their employees a few years ago - and their employees love them for it.
http://www.forhealthfreedom.org/Publications/HealthIns/MSAs.html
3. Replace the FDA with private certification. There is no excuse for the Food and Drug Administration forcing manufacturers to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to prove the safety and efficacy of drugs used for decades in Europe. There is no excuse for allowing the FDA to ban high-potency vitamins (as it's trying to do) or to mount armed raids on alternative medical practitioners (over 200 such raids were staged in 1993). Private companies can certify the safety of drugs at a fraction of the cost of the FDA. Then it should be your decision (in consultation with your doctor) - not the government's - to decide what drugs to use.
4. Privatize Medicare and Medicaid. Charitable aid for the poor is certainly desirable, but as 80% of doctors agree, Medicare and Medicaid is intrusive and often harms patients' health. Paperwork requirements alone are causing many doctors to quit medicine.
Medicare is too expensive, too bureaucratic, and is impoverishing young workers. It's also on the verge of bankruptcy. What's the alternative? For the poor, provide voluntary charitable aid so they can purchase private medical insurance - saving us all Medicare's enormous bureaucratic cost and the horrendous book-keeping requirements (and legal threats) imposed upon doctors and insurers.
5. Curtail Damage Awards. Outrageous malpractice awards are a major cause of escalating medical premiums. Our laws, judges, and juries must distinguish between true negligence, which should be legally actionable, and "acts of God" and human imperfection, which are unavoidable.