What Caught My Eye Today - Mitt Romney's plan for healthcare

Fred's Note: It occurs to me that in recent posts regarding the upcoming U.S. Presidential election that I am guilty of doing the same thing as various media outlets by rendering opinions on statements that I may have taken out of context. To be fair, I'm not a professional journalist and doubt very much that my blog will ever reach the critical mass that the New York Times does. However, the information is readily available to anyone who truly wants to make an informed decision come Election Day in November. With that in mind, over the next several days and weeks, I'll be posting excerpts from the websites of both the Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney and the incumbent Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. It goes without saying that I will be adding some color commentary, but the content is from the candidates themselves.

Third in our series, Mitt Romney's plan for health care.

Health care is more than just one-sixth of the American economy. It is an essential source of well-being for individuals and families.

The United States health care system is blessed with many extraordinary strengths. It produces and attracts the best and the brightest across all fields of medicine, and provides unparalleled innovation, choice, and quality of care. But it also faces significant challenges: high cost, inefficiency, inconsistency, and tens of millions of Americans lacking insurance coverage. On his first day in office, Mitt Romney will issue an executive order that paves the way for the federal government to issue Obamacare waivers to all fifty states. He will then work with Congress to repeal the full legislation as quickly as possible. In place of Obamacare, Mitt will pursue policies that give each state the power to craft a health care reform plan that is best for its own citizens. The federal government’s role will be to help markets work by creating a level playing field for competition.

Mitt will begin by returning states to their proper place in charge of regulating local insurance markets and caring for the poor, uninsured, and chronically ill. Certainly not the most far-fetched proposal to come out of the Romney campaign, but here's the thing, if the states were as efficient as Romney's suggests, why does so much of the health care system reside at the federal level? This has been the case long before Obamacare got enacted. States will have both the incentive and the flexibility to experiment, learn from one another, and craft the approaches best suited to their own citizens. I think it is a bit unrealistic (and a lot unfair) to expect states to get health care right the first time around. However, do we really want to entrust our health care to "trial and error" in hopes that our state governments will eventually figure things out. Admittedly, I'm skeptical, but then again I live in California, the poster child for dysfunctional government. Proposed initiatives include:

• Block grant Medicaid and other payments to states
  To be honest, I don't actually know what this means, so the only comment I can make here is, "Say what?"
• Limit federal standards and requirements on both private insurance and Medicaid coverage
  Here's how I see this playing out. Fewer standards leads to more loopholes. More loopholes leads to more exceptions. More exceptions leads to higher costs and more inefficiencies. So how will this make things better?
• Ensure flexibility to help the uninsured, including public-private partnerships, exchanges, and subsidies
  I hate to be a killjoy, but what makes Romney think that more flexibility will lead to more altruistic behavior on the part of insurance companies and health care providers?
• Ensure flexibility to help the chronically ill, including high-risk pools, reinsurance, and risk adjustment
  I guess my faith in the charitable nature of for-profit corporations (who, by the way, have to answer to shareholders) is not as strong as Romney's is.
• Offer innovation grants to explore non-litigation alternatives to dispute resolution
  Oh yeah, those will work.

Competition drives improvements in efficiency and effectiveness, offering consumers higher quality goods and services at lower cost. It can have the same effect in the health care system, if given the chance to work. Proposed initiatives include:

• Cap non-economic damages in medical malpractice lawsuits
  Given that this is standard boilerplate text in any Republican platform issue, I'd be surprised if this wasn't part of Romney's plan.
• Empower individuals and small businesses to form purchasing pools
  Maybe it's just me, but this sounds rather similar to provisions in Obamacare.
• Prevent discrimination against individuals with pre-existing conditions who maintain continuous coverage
  This one, I absolutely know is part of Obamacare.
• Facilitate IT interoperability
  On one hand, since I work in the IT industry, thanks for the job security, Mr. Romney. On the other, as someone who advocates for smaller government, I find it curious how Romney plans to facilitate IT interoperability without imposing some sort of federal standard.

For markets to work, consumers must have the information and the power to make decisions about their own care. Placing the patient at the center of the process will drive quality up and cost down while ensuring that services are designed to provide what Americans actually want. Proposed initiatives include:

• End tax discrimination against the individual purchase of insurance
  Odd. I didn't know there was any tax discrimination.
• Allow consumers to purchase insurance across state lines
  How is this different from Obamacare?
• Unshackle HSAs by allowing funds to be used for insurance premiums
  Isn't this sort of akin to robbing Peter to pay Paul. The whole idea behind Health Savings Accounts is that individuals covered by high-deductible health plans can receive tax-preferred treatment of money saved for medical expenses. How does diverting money from for actual expenses to insurance premiums do anything to reduce health care costs?
• Promote "co-insurance" products
  I hate to be repetitive, but "Say what?"
• Promote alternatives to "fee for service"
  Whenever I read an grandiose statement like this without and substance to back it up with even a single example, I tend to believe, that the person making the statement doesn't really have a plan and is just playing off a nice sounding sound bite.
• Encourage "Consumer Reports"-type ratings of alternative insurance plans
  And this is going to help in what way? I've read plenty of "Consumer Reports"-type ratings on banks, airlines, you name it. If I took those ratings at face value, I'd never have another credit card or get on another airplane.

So there you have it. But don't take my word for it, form your own opinion's on the Romney health care plan. Here's where you need to go (click here). Next time we'll see how Barack Obama's health care plan measures up.