This is no surprise that the costs would increase or that Obama, etc. would say just ignore it. The health-care industry does need some legislative help and costs can be reduced but that's impossible (and stupid) in the way Obama is doing it.
Some other things that could be done legislatively to help reduce medical care costs are:
1. Putting a reasonable ceiling on malpractice awards for pain and suffering. Also, protect physicians in frivolous malpractice lawsuits and make the losing person pay half and their attorney pay the other half of the cost of the doctor's attorney and legal fees;
2. Mandating insurance companies use community ratings instead of experience ratings (for a specific company, etc.) for setting fees would spread the risk over a larger population and reduce costs;
3. Higher co-pays tend to discourage unnecessary (read frivolous) doctor visits by people because they have more skin in the game (it costs them money) and lower co-pays and deductibles encourage waste and higher cost, i.e. people often think it's free and don't need to use it wisely;
4. Moving people to primary care doctors instead of ER's as the initial contact point would easily reduce a lot of the cost with more price efficient care and could easily be accomplished with changes to the laws and health insurance reimbursement policies;
5. Focus more resources on preventative medicine, education, wellness and primary care for all children is not only compassionate but it saves money by catching critical illnesses before they progress and become far more expensive to treat;
6. Primary care doctors tend to not overuse expensive and often unnecessary tests that substantially increase treatment costs unlike specialists, thus making it wiser to mandate primary caregivers as an initial point of healthcare contact;
7. Generic drugs are often the same chemical formula and cost substantially less. Many health insurance policies charge little if any additional co-pay for a patient choosing the more expensive brand name product. A simple solution is to charge a higher co-pay for more expensive brand name drugs and a less expensive co-pay for less costly generic drugs. people would pay more of their fair share for expensive drugs and save a few bucks if they opted for generic drugs.
8. Allow Health insurance companies to set limits for reimbursement for expensive tests and mandate that doctors offer patients the less expensive large testing laboratory instead of a more expensive in-house laboratory;
9. Make it legal for people who provide home-care for their parents and family members to maximize tax write-offs, use health insurance to supplement costs and services and make an honest attempt to promote families taking care of their loved ones during illness--this would reduce costs, be much better for the ill people and would strengthen our society's family bonds.
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