8 Things We Can Do To Reform Health Care

• Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs). The combination of high-deductible health insurance and HSAs is one solution that could solve many of our health-care problems. For example, Whole Foods Market pays 100% of the premiums for all our team members who work 30 hours or more per week (about 89% of all team members) for our high-deductible health-insurance plan. We also provide up to $1,800 per year in additional health-care dollars through deposits into employees' Personal Wellness Accounts to spend as they choose on their own health and wellness.

Money not spent in one year rolls over to the next and grows over time. Our team members therefore spend their own health-care dollars until the annual deductible is covered (about $2,500) and the insurance plan kicks in. This creates incentives to spend the first $2,500 more carefully. Our plan's costs are much lower than typical health insurance, while providing a very high degree of worker satisfaction.

• Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits. Now employer health insurance benefits are fully tax deductible, but individual health insurance is not. This is unfair.

• Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines. We should all have the legal right to purchase health insurance from any insurance company in any state and we should be able use that insurance wherever we live. Health insurance should be portable.

• Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover. These mandates have increased the cost of health insurance by billions of dollars. What is insured and what is not insured should be determined by individual customer preferences and not through special-interest lobbying.

• Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These costs are passed back to us through much higher prices for health care.

• Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost. How many people know the total cost of their last doctor's visit and how that total breaks down? What other goods or services do we buy without knowing how much they will cost us?

• Enact Medicare reform. We need to face up to the actuarial fact that Medicare is heading towards bankruptcy and enact reforms that create greater patient empowerment, choice and responsibility.

• Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren't covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

Insurance companies cherry picking the low risk pool and leaving those with pre-existing conditions, etc to "wither on the vine"?

Stephanie wrote:That's just more proof the government doesn't belong in the medical business. Doctors know marijuana is effective at alleviating the side effects of chemo and the debilitating effects of diseases like MS but the federal government continues to ban it. By what authority?

Stephanie wrote:Not at all. You're speaking of something different. Pre-existing conditions are one thing, government mandates regarding what must be covered are another.

I'd like to point out one of my most desired reforms did not make this list. That is ending the ban on importing US manufactured drugs from other countries where they cost less. Obama has already promised the drug companies he will do no such thing and that he won't seek to negotiate prices for Medicare and that's just BS. It's unethical to demand Americans pay more for American drugs developed and manufactured here than Canadians or Mexicans do.

Stephanie wrote:Isn't it interesting that so many of the power brokers want us to model our entire health care industry on over seas models, yet the FDA won't even look at foreign research before approving a drug?