Health Care for All - Again

This morning's email brought me an email from the Organizing for America organization. It used to email me about getting Barack Obama elected; now the emails are about my support for enacting policies that represent the reason I supported Obama in the first place. Today's email urged me to write a letter to the editor about what national legislation regarding health care should involve. Here's a quote from the email:

If the final plan is to uphold President Obama's principles of reduced costs, guaranteed choice -- including the choice of a robust public insurance option -- and quality care for all, your voice must be heard.

I agree with the principles. And, the details are extremely important. Here are some things I hope are included:

1. Regarding reduced costs - There used to be regional health planning agencies in the State of Wisconsin. When hospitals wanted to add hugely expensive building projects or equipment, they had to submit plans to their regional health planning agency, which would make an evaluation of the necessity versus costs to consumers if the plans were implemented. This kind of oversight kept costs down.
   
2. Insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies spend huge amounts of money on advertising and lobbying. If they were not allowed to pass these costs on to consumers, health care costs would go down.
3. If Medicare were allowed to negotiate prices with drug companies, health care costs would go down.
   
4. Guaranteed choice - most HMO's do not allow free choice of providers. For example, I am a mental health provider, and the clinics in which I work are not allowed to be on panels for one of the major HMOs in our area. Their choices of mental health providers, chiropractors and dentists are extremely restrictive. Thus, what guaranteed choice is must be spelled out clearly to allow people a real choice. For example, if an employer changes health insurers, the employees should be allowed to keep their service providers and have those services covered by their insurance.
5. "Robust public health insurance option" --- why not let everyone buy into Medicare? It is a system that already works.
6. Quality care for all - As a mental health provider I hear dozens of stories a month about how people feel about their physical health care, the concerns they have about how they are treated, and their fears that their care is not really responsive to their needs, or even downright dangerous. I believe that national policy should set up a strong ombudsman program for health care. In Wisconsin, there is already a nursing home ombudsman program that works very well. It can be a model for an expanded health care ombudsman program.