From their homepage:
Docs4PatientCare Proposed Alternatives for Effective Healthcare Reform:
There is no logical reason to hastily pass this legislation by a predetermined deadline. We have one chance to get this right.
- Bring "all" stakeholders together to help assure a meaningful and sustainable reform by considering many recommendations and proposals.
- Adopt a patient-centered approach to healthcare reform that empowers patients and promotes freedom of choice.
- Use the power of government to assist the uninsured obtain health coverage through modification of the tax code, such as tax credits and vouchers.
- Reduce high insurance premiums by opening up patient risk pools across the entire nation, thereby diffusing risk.
- Allow the individual/family to be the "owner" of the policy making their health care coverage portable and available if they lose their job or move to a new place of employment. This will eliminate exclusion from the new employer's plan for a “pre-existing” health issue and also eliminate a waiting period to qualify for enrollment.
- Encourage and expand Health Savings Accounts. Tax-Free savings vehicle for planned and/or unexpected medical expenses.
- Tort Reform. The costs to our healthcare system secondary to the practice of defensive medicine are over $100 billion annually, or $2,000 per family.
- Insurance Reform. Guarantee insurability due to pre-existing illness. Eliminate Insurance company antitrust exemption.
They have formed a petition with the following points:
Petition point: 1. INDEPENDENCE: Doctors are professionals. They answer to their patients, not the government or an insurance company or any other third party. Treatments should be decided by doctor and patient exclusively.
Petition point: 2. VALUE OUR SERVICES: Physicians have a right to be paid a market-based fee for their services, and to be paid at the time of service or within a reasonable period.
Petition point 3. DOCTORS ARE NOT INSURANCE BILLING CLERKS: Physicians should not be forced to act as billing or collection agents for third-parties, whether private insurance or the government.
Petition point 4. REGULATIONS GET BETWEEN PHYSICIANS & PATIENTS: Excessive regulatory burden on physicians is interfering with patient care. We must decrease regulations, not pass more.
Petition point 5. LIABILITY COSTS MUST BE REDUCED: Costly defensive treatment and tests, and predatory litigation result in excessive liability costs for physicians and patients alike.
Petition point 6. AUTONOMY: Neither physicians nor patients should be forced to participate in government nor private health care plans or programs.
Petition point 7. RIGHT TO CONTRACT: Neither physicians nor patients should be prohibited from entering into mutually agreeable private contracts for services and payments.
Petition point 8. PRIVACY: Physicians must not be forced to disclose patient records without the express consent of patients.
So, you see it is possible to disagree with ObamaCare and still care about people and want healthcare reform.
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1 comment:
Thank you for this post; it is most informative and helpful. I agree that whatever package is finally adopted should get it right. Right is nearly always better than fast.
There is a huge need for someone (if not in the doc's office, where?) to help with insurance claims. The paperwork my parents receive when they visit doctors who are not filing the claims for them is so much and so confusing that I can't understand it. And I have a near-genius I.Q., a degree from one of country's top universities, and more than a decade in a health care profession. How do mere mortals manage?
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