Not sure if I referenced this once before, but let’s give it a bump anyway:
freebeacon.com/the-right-medicine/
[quote]Rep. Tom Price (Ga.) reintroduced his “Empowering Patients First Act” this year, while the Republican Study Committee will release its own legislation as Congress comes back from the August recess, although details have been kept tightly under wraps.
Both of these proposals begin by replacing Obamacare.
“It sets up an alternative, a positive alternative,” said Price. He touted his reform as the “most comprehensive” alternative to Obamacare.
Price’s bill sets up a tax credit to help low-income individuals buy health insurance. It also helps people keep their insurance when they move across state lines, reforms the legal system to reduce doctors’ malpractice liability, and expands the use of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), which are untaxed savings accounts people can use for their health costs.
Price’s bill also addresses the problem of preexisting conditions by allowing people to pool together to buy insurance. “It would solve overnight the problem,” he said.
Price’s plan “dramatically expands the utility of HSAs,” which increase the ability of people to save their own money, Roy said. But expanding a realm of untaxed saving is effectively a tax cut. “You have to pay for that somehow,” Roy said.
While Price’s bill reforms much of the healthcare system, two areas that go unaddressed comprehensively are the tax code’s treatment of health insurance and entitlements, especially Medicare and Medicaid.
All healthcare experts interviewed by the Washington Free Beacon said the first place to start in reforming America’s healthcare system is by reforming the tax code.
Currently health insurance provided by an employer is an untaxed benefit, meaning that there is a tremendous advantage to getting health insurance through work rather than on the individual market.
“The present system penalizes those who buy health insurance on their own,” said Chen. The current system makes it harder to jump between jobs, creating “job lock.”
Medicare is also in desperate need of reform, they said.
“You can’t fix the rest of healthcare without dealing with Medicare,” said Tom Miller, a healthcare expert at the American Enterprise Institute. Medicare pays for so much of total healthcare costs in America that the way that system functions impacts the rest of the healthcare system.
The various proposals all seek to give individuals control over their insurance, increasing competition among private insurance companies for people’s business. This competition would then drive down costs.[/quote]
