Watched only Fox News Sunday today, especially the panel on what the Comrade may do about socialized medicine. Apparently one "solution" or a compromise he may be able to sell in the Senate is to build a so-called "trigger" into any reform bill. I believe Olympia Snow, one of the Silly Senate Sisters from Maine, came up with that one.
A trigger is some type of built-in objective or a limit -- more like a tripwire, actually -- that would set off another activity. Like, in regard to socialized medicine, agreed-upon legislation would say something like, "If health insurance premiums increase by more than 10% over 2010, a government-funded socialized medicine program will be established."
Or, "If more than 25% of the population is uninsured by the end of 2010, a government-funded socialized medicine program will be established."
The legislators can make the trigger anything they want. Like, "If the sun rises tomorrow, a government-funded socialized medicine program will be established."
The trouble with any sort of trigger is that it doesn't offer a solution for any of the real problems in health insurance at all. It just describes the conditions that need to be present for establishing a government-funded socialized medicine program. Without any real solutions, the triggers predictably will go off.
So if congress is going to set up a trigger, then to be fair, they should also change other of the existing regulations on the insurance industry to make reform possible. Like:
1.) Tort reform -- or changing the rules for people filing lawsuits against doctors and other health care service providers. What they have in some countries in Europe, as I understand it, is a "Loser Pays" policy. That is, right now in the USA, if you sue your doctor for negligence or something, you can include in the suit that the doctor will pay your legal fees -- even if you file a frivolous lawsuit. Under the European law, if you lose your case or it gets thrown out of court for being ridiculous, you pay both your fees and the doctor's fees and probably the court fees, as well, for wasting everyone's time. Loser Pays helps to reduce the number of frivolous claims are filed.
Another approach is to limit the "punitive damages." That is, while any genuine damages would be compensated -- like the costs incurred to have another doctor take the scissors out of your stomach, plus lost wages, etc. -- you'd be limited in how much you could punish the first doctor for leaving the scissors in there in the first place. Right now, you could sue for $10 million or whatever you think you could get with a sympathetic jury. These punitive damages might be capped at a $1 million or so -- still a pretty fair amount everywhere outside the Beltway.
2.) Something only the feds can do -- order the states to eliminate restrictions and/or limitations on the health insurance sold within each state. That is, allow insurance companies to sell insurance across state borders -- the same way we can now buy car insurance and even property and casualty. This would help enormously in fostering competition among insurance carriers and also in reducing the cost of policies, because people wouldn't have to buy any more insurance than they need or want.
Right now in Illinois and elsewhere, too, an employer has to provide insurance that covers a specified range of things, like emergency services, surgery, perhaps annual physical check-ups, mammograms, addiction counseling, fertility treatments, and on and on and on. It might be very helpful for a small business to offer some type of basic coverage without all the frills, and perhaps with the option that employees could purchase more insurance on their own, if they wish.
I'm not sure, but eliminating the state-based restrictions might also open up the possibility of offering more affordable care for people with chronic illnesses or the potential for them, because insurers could create different types of actuarial pools. I don't know this for sure. If true, this might go some distance to letting everyone buy insurance regardless of any pre-existing conditions.
The portability of insurance -- taking it with you when you leave a job -- would also be a greater possibility by eliminating the state regulations.
Without these and similar provisions that enable actual reform of the rules and regulations that now define and limit the insurance industry, a trigger would be only a delaying mechanism to postpone the advent of socialized medicine; without other reforms, the trigger is guaranteed to go off at some point.
In short, the big problem with health insurance is the way it's already being regulated. Take away or modify those regulations, and there would probably be any number of solutions and options available. I'm sure insurance companies would be happy to get somewhat creative if it means they can sell more policies.
'Course this doesn't do anything for Medicare/Medicaid, which are NOT insurance, but rather government-funded entitlement programs. Costs for those programs are driven by other factors than those that drive the insurance industry. Like, the more people enrolled in Medicare/Medicaid, the greater the cost. The more fraud is allowed and/or tolerated, the greater the cost. And things like that.
And I really believe that the people now running government-funded health care entitlement programs should clean their own house, prove their efficiencies, document a reduction in fraud, before they're entrusted to manage health care for the rest of the nation. Otherwise, any government-funded socialized medicine program will only magnify these problems across the whole population.
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