If I were asked to attack health care problems in the US from a business approach, here are my priorities.
First, I would not promise my stakeholders that I could reduce costs with a plan that increases costs by one trillion dollars as established by my controllers. And, with a government that has never run anything well. Don’t kid anyone, costs will go up with a single payer system, not go down. When the government runs the entire health care system, it will be the most expensive, least efficient, and poorest run in the world. The pledges to reduce costs by my government ring hollow with me after a lifetime of seeing them fail.
Next, I would look at the 18% drain on costs from malpractice insurance. I would establish some form of tort reform to reduce this.
Then, I would look at the insurance being managed by my government. I would bid this out to private insurance companies. Medicare, Medicaid, and VA insurance. When the costs for these is greater than the Canadian government pays to insure all their population and we are covering 27% with government programs, I would look at eliminating the government control of these programs. It might be possible to increase benefits while reducing costs.
This is the flip side of Obama’s plan. Get the government out of the insurance business completely. The cost savings would be the elimination of all government agencies that are working on these plans. There would be a small group left to adjudicate issues between insurance users and private insurers to make sure the rules established are followed.
Next, all government workers would move to the new insurance plan. The savings from the cost of their Cadillac plans and this plan would be substantial.
Last, I would take some savings from the actions taken and establish scholarships for medical students and nurses. I would set a goal to increase the population of both by a significant number in the near-future. Supply and demand will help drive costs down.
For the first two years, this is all I would do. I would do honest accounting of the savings I generate by these actions. At the end of two years, I would be able to tell the stakeholders how many uninsured people I can add to the rolls from the savings I have generated. And, assure them the doctors and nurses will be available to handle the new insureds.
Since private businesses run everything better than our government, why not assume we should let them run the health insurance programs now being run by the government. I promise you they would reduce the 20% fraud in Medicare and Medicaid almost overnight. I assure you their employees would come to work, unlike government workers. I am sure they would get more done with less people, less perks, less benefits, and less overhead.
Any prudent businessman would outsource all government run insurance plans. Any prudent businessman would cut malpractice insurance costs. Any prudent businessman would take government workers to an insurance plan that matches one given to our elderly and poor. We don’t need a high-end insurance plan to hire government workers. If they didn’t have it, maybe more would quit and we could cut costs in other areas of government.