Solutions to the Healthcare “Crisis”

Separate the Doctors and the Insurance Companies

Doctors become members of insurance groups. Patients subscribe to these groups and are limited to only those doctors within the group. The absurdity of this arrangement is best illustrated by applying this same arrangement to the auto industry. Suppose that AutoInsuranceCo only allowed its customers to purchase AutoManufacturerCo cars and use AutoManufacturerCo mechanics. Furthermore, if an auto needed repairs, the owner would first need to take the car back to the dealer and get prior approval. Once this approval was received the customer could only use AutoRepairShop.

The key to this solution is to separate the doctors from the insurance companies. Insurance companies would cover treatment options and customers could select which plans they desired based on their own ability to pay a deductible. If a patient values cancer coverage he will pay for this. If a patient values traumatic coverage rather than routine coverage he can pay for this. This is akin to the auto insurance coverage where a person can select varying levels of coverage based on his own evaluation of the risks and likelihood of certain accidents and results from those accidents occurring (i.e. uninsured motorist, personal injury).

This will allow a patient to select any doctor to treat him. The patient can then negotiate the fee and the insurance company will pay its share of the treatment. This gives incentives to the doctors to lower prices and provide better care because they will be competing with each other more directly instead of getting automatic patients from insurance company referrals.

Eliminate Coverage for Non-Paying Customers

This may sound like a cruel idea but no service is owed to any person who cannot afford to pay for it. By eliminating “free” care to those who show up at emergency rooms without insurance coverage it will force people to place health care insurance on a higher priority level and thereby increase the amount of people who are covered. Those that do not pay for coverage will have acted upon their own value system without costing everyone else.

Children who are not covered would still receive care but the parents would be held responsible for the costs via the court system. If a patient cannot or will not provide identification information, the hospital will be absolved from all liability for non-treatment.

Tort Reform

A new system of malpractice insurance would go a long way to reducing the costs of health care and limit the influence litigation will have upon the decisions of the health care professionals in the rendering of care to patients.

All physicians should be required to pay into a single malpractice defense fund which will pay out to patients in the event of malpractice. By spreading the risk across the entire industry the cost to each doctor would be limited. This, coupled with stricter requirements for patients to show malpractice would eliminate costly litigation and allow doctors to focus on the proper treatment for patients rather than the least litigious treatment.