My Idea For Health Care

By Paul Pakusch

There has been a lot of talk about making school districts, governments and agencies run more like a business. Do you know what the purpose of a business is? The purpose of a business is to make a profit. This means that for whatever service the business provides, the priority  is to make a profit for the owners. So that means health insurance companies main purpose is to make a profit for the shareholders of the company. To provide Health Care is a service, but that service is secondary to making sure that the shareholders get their money. To me, this is bass ackwards to the way it should be. I think the purpose of health insurance should be to provide health care, not to make money for shareholders. There's just something wrong with a system where money is more important than someone's health.

In the Declaration of Independence, it states that the United States is to provide for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Much has been said about liberty and the freedom for the pursuit of happiness. But I haven't heard much about the "life" portion of that clause. To me, it means that the United States should provide for the opportunity of life through the most advanced technological means in medicine. Why should just rich people be able to obtain this care? It should be available to all citizens of the United States. That's how I interpret that clause.

Therefore, I believe the system where private health insurance companies are providing healthcare based on who can afford it is just wrong.

My idea is to do away with all of the health insurance companies in this country and come up with one nonprofit Foundation whose main purpose is to provide healthcare for all of the citizens of the United States. It would be recognized by Congress, but operate independently of the US government. Every citizen would fund it through a reasonable and fair income tax, such as Medicaid is funded now. Every US citizen would have access to this program. Every US citizen is assigned a social security number, and this same number can be your ID number for healthcare services.

Additional funding could also be done by individuals and companies making donations to this Foundation and getting tax deductions in return. It would be an incentive for companies to invest in US Healthcare.

Doctors and specialists could continue to operate as they are now.  Patients would schedule appointments just as they do now. A system would be set up so that billing would be done to this Foundation. There could be a reasonable fee system set up so that doctors, specialists, and other Healthcare facilities would be paid for their services. If a doctor or specialist wishes to charge more, they would be free to do so provided the patient is willing to pay the difference. But that would be outside of the normal fee structure and the patient would not be reimbursed by the Foundation for the difference. It would be their choice to do that.

I recognize that you need competition to advance research and keep prices in check. That's where the pharmaceutical companies come in. The pharmaceutical companies can keep researching medications to cure illnesses and diseases. Doctors should be able to prescribe the medication that would be the most effective for their patients without any interference from anyone else. The Foundation would pay for prescriptions. There should not be any incentive from pharmaceutical companies for doctors to pick one company over another, just the most effective medication, and competition among the pharmaceuticals  to keep the prices in check.

This is just a brief description of what I'd love to see for health care.