California Conservative

Friday 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.
MCCALLUM: Yeah but how are you going to get rid of all of those state mandates? This sounds like a really simple idea & I have put this to so many lawmakers & they can give you every which way to Tuesday why they can’t do this.

DR. GRAY: Well, you don’t necessarily have to get rid of the state mandate. What you do is you let a person vote with where they buy their insurance. If somebody can buy insurance from a state with fewer mandates, provides a policy more in keeping with their needs, you really don’t have to change any of these state mandates. What you do is you give 50 state legislatures a chance to compete with each other because they want to protect their people, they’ll want to protect their citizens, but at the same time they want to make health care more efficient. This lets 50 groups of people try & optimize the solution.

MCCALLUM: OK. Lets squeeze in one more good one because it’s a good one. Let people buy insurance with pre-tax dollars so basically set aside dollars like a medical savings account.

DR. GRAY: Yeah, if you look through the history of Western medicine, power either moves to the state or towards the patients & physicians. All my proposals are designed to put control of health care decision-making back in the hands of patients & their doctors. This is another way to do that. So if you let individuals have the same tax advantage that businesses do, they can choose to shop elsewhere if they so need.

Friday afternoon, I spoke with a friend who works at the State Capitol about this interview. I told this friend what Dr. Gray said about mandates. This friend said that that’s a great way to drop health insurance costs. The biggest reason why it’s great is because eliminating mandates doesn’t require tax increases. The second biggest reason why it’s great is because most of these mandates wouldn’t exist if not for the special interests. Anything that lowers health care costs without raising taxes is vastly superior to the defeated Democrats’ legislation.

For this to work, though, two things must happen. First, federal legislation must be passed that eliminates the federal ban on buying health insurance policies across state lines. I think that’ll happen if a spotlight is put on the legislation and legislators. Second, alot of states must pass medical mandate reform legislation. That way, people have options on where they’ll buy their insurance from.

Legislators shouldn’t think that they’ll get away ignoring this type of reform. Those politicians voting against mandate reform legislation would tell voters that they didn’t vote for legislation that would’ve significantly lowered health insurance costs. That’d be a political disaster. Legislators that don’t pass mandate reform legislation will face the voters’ wrath in the next election.

I paid a visit to Physicians for Reforms’ website to find out more about them. Here’s a little information from their About Us page:

Physicians for Reform…seeks to keep the patient’s welfare the central focus of medicine, not the fluctuating interests of government. Specifically, Physicians for Reform seeks to:

1. Make health insurance affordable for every American.
2. Place the patient at the center of American healthcare.
3. Reduce the cost of healthcare without restricting access.
4. Reform today’s broken medical/legal system.
5. Restore the patient/physician relationship.

I’ve said before that the Democrats’ approach to health care was backwards. The Democrats start with insuring everyone. Lowering health care and health insurance costs should be the highest priority. If prices drop or stabilize, access will improve. Further, as prices drop, more people will have an incentive to buy insurance.

Two groups make up a high percentage of the uninsured: families making $75,000 and healthy 20-somethings. If health insurance cost significantly less than it does today, I’d bet that alot of people in these demographic groups would buy health insurance.

Putting together a high deductible policy that included catstrophic coverage with an HSA would cover most families’ health insurance needs. Hospitals and clinics love these policies because, in most instances, they don’t have to deal with rationing, government bureaucrats or insurance companies.

I recently talked with the Lady Logician about Rush Limbaugh’s stay in a Hawaiian hospital. What we both noticed was that, on his first day back behind “the golden EIB microphone”, Rush said that the hospital knocked thirty-five percent off his bill because he paid with plastic. He said that he didn’t get special treatment, that that’s standard procedure for patients who pay their own bills.

I know it’s speculation but I’m betting that people’s habits would swiftly change if they learned that they could get Rush’s deal. I’m betting that people would demand mandate reform if they could see how much each mandate drove up the price of their health insurance premiums.

Dr. Gray made another important point that should give businesses an incentive for getting on board with mandate reform. Businesses that see their insurance premiums drop can invest the savings in new equipment or expanding their businesses.

Thanks to PFR and Dr. Gray, we now have a great alternative to the Democrats’ health care/health insurance legislation. It’s time we passed real health care reform, not just something that’s called health care reform.

Finally, there’s another great aspect to mandate reform: there’s no need for secret negotiations and tawdry special interest dealmaking. I’d bet the proverbial ranch that that’s the type of reform legislation that the average person would appreciate.

Technorati Tags: Mandates, Health Insurance, Insurance Premiums, Reform, Physicians For Reform, C.L. Gray, Rush Limbaugh, HSAs, New Jersey, Kentucky, Elections

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 24th, 2010 at 1:01 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Elections, Health Care, Special Interests. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.