Physicians for Reform
Sunday, January 24th, 2010Friday morning, I watched Martha McCallum interview Dr. C.L. Gray, a physician and CEO of Physicians for Reform, about some inexpensive ways to lower health care costs while increasing access to health insurance. Thankfully, I DVR’ed the interview, which allowed me to transcribe the interview. Here’s that transcript:
MCCALLUM: Let’s take a look at the first one. State mandates drive up costs. Now I live in New Jersey, where there are plenty of state mandates. Tell me why this is a specific area that we can fix & needs to be done.
DR. C.L. GRAY: Various states have different mandates that the insurance companies have to follow.& there are things that are mandated that are covered that aren’t necessarily needed by all the patients. If our primary concern is access for the millions of people that don’t have access, then we need to lessen the mandates so we can provide basic coverage. For example, a healthy 25-year-old male in New Jersey will pay about 6 times as much as a healthy 25-year-old male will pay in Kentucky simply because of state mandates.
MCCALLUM: So that’s the main argument for being able to shop across state lines so if that 25-year-old in New Jersey can say “you know what, I can get a very cheap plan in Kentucky that covers my needs, you know, catastrophic needs, things like that, right?
DR. GRAY: Absolutely. And when we’re talking about the economy & jobs, think of what would happen if businesses in New r Jersey could purchase insurance from Kentucky. If they could drop their health care costs by 50-60 percent, that money could be used to either increase wages or hire people or invest in new equipment. That would serve as an economic stimulus without spending a dime of federal money. (more…)