Fixing Health Care financing

FIxing the Healthcare financing mess isn't all the hard.  FYI, this is presented from the perspective of insurance coverage for dental care, but it would also apply to medical coverage.

It should start (and pretty much end) with Congress repealing the carrier's antitrust exemption -- carriers have generally shown an inability to be trusted not to mess up the normal function of the marketplace for their own profit (whether they are for profit or non-profit entities), while also reducing the quality of care provided... 

IMHO, a normal functioning health care market should allow clinics to have one and only one fee schedule, just like any other store or vendor.   A carrier could offer to pay $XXX for any procedure, and the rest would be up to the patient to pay... Let patients search around for a price they feel is good for them, if cost is more important than other issues... 

Without an antitrust exemption that lets carriers to set clinic fees, Carriers could base their reimbursement schedules upon some portion of the percentile fee of the spectrum of fees that clinics in an area charge. That's what they pay for a procedure, regardless of what any clinic charges. 

For example, say the 60th percentile (slightly above average) charge for a crown is $1000, and the carrier wants to pay half, then they'd pay $500 for a crown, regardless of what the clinic charges.  If Clinic A charges $800, then the patient portion would be $300 at Clinic A, if the Clinic B charges $1500, then the patient portion would be $1000 at Clinic B.  

Such a reimbursement system would not require an industry anti-trust exemption, plans could easily cross state lines, clinics wouldn't have to sign up as providers, they'd just bill the carrier, perhaps after filing a fee schedule with the carrier to aid in their percentile fee tracking... 

Carriers might also offer the patient financing for the patient's copay... Yes, it's long past time for carriers to think out of their bozo box... They don't have to do that with their precious anti-trust exemption... 

Mostly, what would happen is instead of dulling the marketplace with increasing low end care options pushed by carriers, this sort of (non-anti-trust exemption) carrier reimbursement system could enhance competition for service, price and quality of care provided. And the change in improvement of care and financing options to pay for care, would likely be very swift.

1

Manage

Bill of Lefts

---

     The Bill of Lefts include, but are not limited, to these certain unalienable principles :

1. Thou shall be secure in the fact government will take care of you. Everything is free as long as you don't work for it. So you are best off not working at all or as little as possible.
2. Government shall never take away anything it gives you. However, it may take away anything you earn on your own.
3. There shall be plenty of mandates on the other guy. You are safe as long as you choose do as little as possible -- then government will not ask you to do anything in return. Whatever you do, don't ever think aboutemploying someone.  If you do hire a maid, best not to report it.
4. Bubbas who hang out together can get most anything they want as long as they promise to vote for incumbent liberals.
5. Government can always raise taxes on the rich because success is just not fair no matter what the tax rate.
6. Deficits are a part of life, but that is only a problem for those with money.  If the government gives you a credit card for health care or anything, use it as much as you want.  The more you use it, the more free things you can expect to get with it in the future.
7. The Outcome Based Media (aka the PRESSident) is protected by the freedom of the press and can rewrite or reinterpret the Constitution to meet any desired PRESSidential goal or specification. The PRESSidentis defined as the collective will of the liberal PRESSSSSS.
8. The Outcome Based Media is only required to report the views that the PRESSident feels are useful propaganda for the intended audience of that report. Conflicting positions are fine as long as the last statement promises new programs.
9. Most laws are best written by federal courts and regulatory agencies, so it is best to make any legislation as vague and contradictory as possible.
10. All rights reserved to the States and individuals are subject to the previous rule. (articles 1 thru 10 adopted by 10/95)
11. When your position can't be substantiated by logic or facts, divert the issue to another topic that defames or attacks your opposition's credibility.  It is good if there is little justification to do so, and even better if your spin is full of falsehoods and logical gaps. (9/96)
    1. If you are guilty of something, defend yourself by saying your opponent is guilty of the same crime, even if it there is no truth in the accusation. (4/00).
12. Unquestioning faith in Big Government shall be a promoted and protected right.  This non-secular faith, its welfare programs and worship of liberal politicians shall replace religion, as well as the faith based charities.  Conservatives who have no faith in big government shall be persecuted and scorned as 'radical right extremists' of the worse kind.  (4/98)

Surfing the Curl

One thing that DC, the politicians, burrOcrats and media don't get about Trump is he, like successful business owners of all sorts of sizes, are used to continuously non-stop working towards their goals pretty near 24/7. Successful business folks continue along undeterred by all sorts of endless drama and sideshows that businesses typically encounter every day.  This also applies to many of his top cabinet appointments...

In business, if you stop moving forwards to your goals (note the plural 'goals'), and are distracted by nonsense sideshows, you will be quickly passed up by others... Trump is not just in his element as President, he's like riding the curl, confidently surfing an endless wave... Just like he pretty much has done for quite some time...

Politicians and BurrOcrats and the Media, nah, not so much... They are used to existence in a relatively safe and slowly expanding swamp... Politicans do take up the surf every few years at election time... Most look to ride the easy short waves, then return to the swamp after the election...

The Electoral College as a tennis match

Our Electoral College system explained -- it's like tennis

• Our electoral college system is roughly similar to the scoring system in Tennis... In tennis, you only have to be the first to win 6 games (by two) to win a set. You can lose some games without scoring a point. And win others by just one point more than your opponent... You may win more close games and win the match, while the opponent wins more points...
• One common tennis strategy is in the games you lose, you work just hard enough to make your opposition sweat and use up energy while saving your best efforts for the must win games.
• The reality in Tennis as well as Presidential electoral politics is you have to win the tough games... It doesn't matter who won the most points, only who won the most games...
• Same applies to the electoral college. To win the Presidency, you have to win the tough states. What happens in the other states doesn't matter. You focus your energy on the states you must win...
• In the 2016 election, the Ocrats and left wing media spent way too much energy and focus preaching to their choir in the big city turf while continuing to ignore the folks in 'flyover country'. This also basically describes how they've bullied/governed for the past eight years... 
• Trump focused his energies on the folks in the fly over country the Ocrats and media have ignored, and won... Go figure...

Patently the problem, with a solution.

IMHO, one solution to better productivity and prosperity for all would be to provide tax cuts for companies based upon the duration of their patents. If a company halves it patents from 20 to 10 years, the tax rate on income from those patents might be halved. If they go to 5 years, it would be a quarter. No patent, no tax. Or something like that.

The patent reality is until recent times, it took nearly 20 years (a generation) for a product to penetrate the marketplace. These days with global internet connectivity, full penetration can take a few weeks in some industries, a few years in others.

The useful lifetime of many patents is far less than 20 years. Modern marketing, distribution, engineering and production capabilities don't require much time at all to achieve market saturation. Once market saturation is reached, constipation by patent rules and work/marketing practices of all sorts starts to take over.

If one opened up the marketplace to a market sensitive patent tax scheme, there would be a lot more innovation and shared prosperity that would be intimately sensitive to each market niche.

As patent times drop, there would be more 'new' and shared ideas to work with. The need for walls of rules to stretch profits for the duration of a patent would dissipate and those most quickly adapting to such changes would be most successful in competing in a much wider open and prosperous marketplace. 

It's also likely that smaller and more nimble companies might be better at adapting to this than the brontosaurus sized companies that currently dominate the world's marketplaces.   The stacks of bucks that are sucked into the current behemoths would likely be shared more evenly across the marketplace and workforce to most everyone's benefit. 

Taxpayers Pay and Plow the Road to Single Payer

O-Care isn't about creating a viable insurance marketplace -- it's about creating a taxpayer funded money laundering scheme to plow, pave and pay for the road to single payer.

It goes like this -- 

1. OCare is really a massive expansion of Medicaid -- that part of O-Care has been very successful. 
2. Expect O-Care to mandate that providers who accept O-Care insurance to be required to take Medicaid as well.  That will make sure there's lots of claims to process rather than lots of Medicaid patients on waiting lists...  
3. Medicaid claims are processed by carriers because the gubermint has been proven to be incompetent at this task. 
4. Carriers don't mind the claims processing task -- they get the taxpayers to pay for processing OMedicaid claims, and they don't have to pay for the claim. 
5. It's all paid for by the taxpayer. Easy gravy...
6. Carriers in turn will take significant portions (billions?) of what they are paid for processing OMedicaid claims, and lobby politicians for more Medicaid claims to process, plus higher taxes so they get paid even better for processing more claims. 
7. All paid for by the taxpayers... Did I mention that again?  My bad... Go figure...
8. It's a socialist taxpayer funded money laundering scam made in liberal heaven.

Also, don't hold your breath for any of the crony GOP LOSERship to stop this sort of crony activity -- helping crony's out in exchange for more campaign bucks and insider trading info is the LOSERship's bread and butter when it comes to maintaining their power over common sense Constitutionallist tea party types.

Ocare Petition/Boycott

Cruz and the new GOP ought to push the idea of counting paying folks signing up for Obamacare as a petition.  If 50% of those eligible sign up by Dec 15, then he'll stand down and let Ocare proceed, otherwise, Ocare goes away.   Seems only those actually paying some premium expense would be eligible to be counted in this petition as those getting Ocare for free are bought with other people's money.   

Even if this idea doesn't make headway in Congress, it's likely to be picked up by average Bubbas and Bubbets who log onto Ocare and find they'll be paying big bucks for Ocare.  Unlike subsidized Congresscritterrs, folks in the struggling Oconomy of Main Street will have to redirect their plans for a new house, new boat, new car, nice vacation and saving for college for their kids to pay for Ocare, with it's $6000 deductible and high premiums. 

Some might call the people's Ocare petition to be an Ocare boycott -- big deal, liberals try the same sort of thing all the time against conservative companies...   Let the Ocrats make all the noise they want to fight it -- all publicity is good publicity if your cause is just...