Ben Graber for Congress. Florida's 19th Congressional district. As Chair of Health Care in the Florida House of Rep. Ben Graber sponsored major health care reforms. He has been consulted on health reform issues by several states and the Clinton administration in the past. His ideas should be reviewed by congress. He plans to present them as bills when elected.
Health Care Reform: Why a public option is necessary. An idea who’s time has come.
Picture this in 2015 , 60 million uninsured, millions of baby boomers flood Medicare, state government cuts Medicaid due to lack of funding and no new revenue sources. Physician shortages lead to more people being attended by physician extenders. Emergency rooms are overcrowded. Prescription drugs are unaffordable to most middle class people. Surgery centers begin opening in South America offering low cost care. Health Care is now an offshore service for millions of Americans. Businesses begin dropping health care insurance as a benefit due to lack of affordability. The government cannot pass new health care legislation because the national debt is two trillion dollars a year.
Concerned ? You should be. The answer to this scenario is to pass health reform this year. But what should it look like? Not what’s being proposed. The best approach is to create a new public option within the existing public plan. Medicare needs to add a new public option for provider driven managed care . Right now private insurance companies are subsidized to recruit Medicare patients and give them private care through their commercial HMO programs. It’s costly, inefficient and very profitable for the insurance industry. No competition exists here. They do the same with state Medicaid. The result is rationing expensive care while giving more preventive care at lower costs. Co pays and services become more expensive and less available with each year a patient is in the plan. This results in HMO shopping annually by patients. The problem is lack of continuity and duplication of effort. But HMO’s find this scenario profitable.
A public option Managed care plan for Medicare and Medicaid would lower costs, provide better service and continuity of care for the same dollars. Private HMO’s would have to compete on cost and quality to attract these same patients. Why do I think this would work? Because in Florida The "Medipass Plan "was such a plan and was highly successful until private insurers successfully disbanded it legislatively.
This type of plan for Medicare at the federal level and Medicaid at the state level would begin the process of competition needed to control costs and improve care without developing a new controversial public plan to compete with all private insurance.
The success of such a program would create a strong standard for the private insurers to emulate when privately insured consumers demand similar programs for themselves from the insurance industry.
The Medicare and Medicaid systems exist now and can be easily modified. This will be a catalyst for change that no government , business or insurer can stop once the consumer demands this type of program. It can pass with bipartisan support because it will lower costs and increase quality and it will not effect private insurance plans directly. No one can argue against that without appearing biased toward the private insurance industry. There is nothing more powerful then an idea who’ time has come", especially one that has a track record of success in Florida
Ben Graber, M.D., former chairman of the Fl. House of Rep Health care committee 1992-1996