Response to Sidney Sun Telegraph Editorial position on Health Care

In response to the Editorial "Health Reform Needed:"

It is examples like Alex Colorado's that cause Americans to rise up and rightfully hate the insurance companies. There are other stories about insurance and it isn't just Health that causes concerns.

The entirety of the insurance industry needs to be reformed. Here is my proposal:


From the initiation of the law, give every person up to 1 year to get insurance, for those who can afford it. Call it a grace period. For those who get insurance, they are covered with pre-existing conditions and their rates are based on their general health risk group. These rates will be flexible based on the overall group with a modifier to lower the rates based on their healthiness, relative to the overall risk group they are associated with. This basically gives an incentive to live a healthy lifestyle.

Once you are in a plan under the new law, you cannot be canceled, or have your rates raised while you are in your risk group. There would have to be language to define the risk groups by age and not health conditions.

Those who can afford insurance and do not, will have to pay the automatic highest rate and deductible plans available for 2 years if they get sick and need major health care. After two years, they would be placed in a regular risk group for their age with all benefits as described therein.

Those in this country cannot ever be allowed to participate in this plan.

Tort reform must be addressed

Defensive medicine must be addressed (a component of tort reform)

Doctors should be scored publicly (patient's names withheld) on their performance in treating all of the health issues they see. This would be placed in a national registry that customers/patients can review so they know which doctors are helping people and which doctors to avoid. The side benefit of this is that if an area has bad doctors that let patients lie in a hospital bed overnight and suffer two massive strokes, that doctor might not be able to keep practicing medicine. Doctors might see this as an area to move their practice or start one based on need.

People who meet the requirements of the plan may not be refused coverage for any FDA approved drug or procedure. Special policy exceptions can be made to include promising medical trials for people in truly desperate, life or death circumstances.

Allow insurance companies to compete across state lines. Make every person who purchases health insurance a stock owner, entitled to a reduced rate on their plan if the insurance company makes a profit or otherwise uses that profit to grow the business in any way.

All of this would have to be placed in that cryptic language the Democrats feel is too above our heads to read, but the common sense of it is this: If you want to provide health care coverage, you must give the proper incentive to those who need it to buy it, those who provide it to make it more affordable, the doctors to operate only at the highest levels of success, and the legal system to prevent junk lawsuits from amassing huge costs that ultimately get placed on the backs of consumers.

The editorial went after one aspect of the health care issue. It is broader than that and a comprehensive plan needs to be undertaken, rather than the empty promises and the real threats of financial instability of those in Congress as the plans have been laid out before us.