Persnickety

Newt's Tip #3 of our continuing saga: • Meet the needs of the chronically ill. Most individuals with chronic diseases want to be in charge of their own care. The mother of an asthmatic child, for example, should have a device at home that measures the child's peak airflow and should be taught when to change his medication, rather than going to the doctor each time. Having the ability to obtain and manage more health dollars in Health Savings Accounts is a start. A good model for self-management is the Cash and Counseling program for the homebound disabled under Medicaid. Individuals in this program are able to manage their own budgets and hire and fire the people who provide them with custodial services and medical care. Satisfaction rates approach 100%, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. We should also encourage health plans to specialize in managing chronic diseases instead of demanding that every plan must be all things to all people. For example, special-needs...

Continuing our Newt's Greatest Ideas About Healthcare, his second bullet hits close to the mark, kinda: • Make health insurance portable. The first step toward genuine portability—and the best way of solving the problems of pre-existing conditions—is to change federal policy. Employers should be encouraged to provide employees with insurance that travels with them from job to job and in and out of the labor market. Also, individuals should have the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines. When insurers compete for consumers, prices will fall and quality will improve. I've put the key words in bold. Making insurance portable has been one of those EUREKA ideas for quite a long time. People lose their jobs and find that they are quite vulnerable to catastrophic illnesses that can bankrupt them. Or worse. What's worse than bankruptcy? How about death? It's well known that every two months as many people die from our so called healthcare mess than died in the...

Continuing our Newt's Greatest Ideas About Healthcare, his second bullet hits close to the mark, kinda: • Make health insurance portable. The first step toward genuine portability—and the best way of solving the problems of pre-existing conditions—is to change federal policy. Employers should be encouraged to provide employees with insurance that travels with them from job to job and in and out of the labor market. Also, individuals should have the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines. When insurers compete for consumers, prices will fall and quality will improve. I've put the key words in bold. Making insurance portable has been one of those EUREKA ideas for quite a long time. People lose their jobs and find that they are quite vulnerable to catastrophic illnesses that can bankrupt them. Or worse. What's worse than bankruptcy? How about death? It's well known that every two months as many people die from our so called healthcare mess than died in the...

In todays Opinion (found at http://tinyurl.com/ybltpld) Newt Gingrich has deigned to give us his take on the healthcare debate. Obama said he wanted new ideas, and Newt has some, or thinks he has some. The question is, Are Newt's ideas just more Republican blather? Well, I thought we should look at his list, one item at a time. Here's the first bullet in Newt's gun: • Make insurance affordable. The current taxation of health insurance is arbitrary and unfair, giving lavish subsidies to some, like those who get Cadillac coverage from their employers, and almost no relief to people who have to buy their own. More equitable tax treatment would lower costs for individuals and families. Many health economists conclude that tax relief for health insurance should be a fixed-dollar amount, independent of the amount of insurance purchased. A step in the right direction would be to give Americans the choice of a generous tax credit or the ability to deduct the value of their health i...