Over at Marginal Revolution (which has the excellent tag line: “small steps toward a much better world”), the author posts healthcare reforms that he would support more than the current bill making its way through Congress. Some of them are really good.
4. Make an all-out attempt to limit deaths by hospital infection and the simple failure of doctors to wash their hands and perform other medically obvious procedures.
5. Make an all-out attempt, working with state and local governments (recall, since the Feds are picking up the Medicaid tab they have temporary leverage here), to ease the spread of low-cost, walk-in health care clinics, run on a WalMart sort of basis. Stepping into the realm of the less feasible, weaken medical licensing and greatly expand the roles of nurses, paramedics, and pharmacists.
6. Make an all-out attempt, comparable to the moon landing effort if need be, to introduce price transparency for medical services. This can be done.
He does add the disclaimer at the beginning that these are merely reforms he would gladly trade the Obama bill for, and not the best ever, but I agree that some of these reforms are really desirable. Check out the full post here.
Also, and this is something I hadn’t yet learned, the current Obama plan does away with existing HSA’s, which is a bit sad. I have an employer-funded HSA and the money that is being added to it tax-free is part of my future planning. I hope that I don’t lose it, it really has helped us think carefully about medical procedures.