Topic: Tom Coburn's proposal to eliminate Obamacare

[oldcoastie6468]

Title 1: Repeal the President’s Health Care Law
 
Section 101: Repeal Obamacare
 
Despite promises that Obamacare would lower health care costs, costs continue to skyrocket for patients, families, taxpayers, and businesses. Today’s health care law is not the solution to the health care crisis facing our nation, and the American people continue to reject it because they know that the current course is simply unsustainable. An alternative approach is necessary to fulfill the promise to lower health care costs, advance patient-centered reforms, and provide needed relief from job-crushing mandates, while at the same time ensuring affordable health care for patients and taxpayers. We can achieve sustainable, affordable, health care that puts patients – not the government –in charge of their health decisions and pocketbooks.
 
The first step toward achieving sustainable, affordable, patient-centered health care is to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (HCERA).1
 
 
Title 2: Replace Obamacare With Sustainable, Patient-Centered Reforms
 
Section 201: Adopt Common-Sense Consumer Protections
 
We believe all Americans deserve access to common-sense consumer protections in health coverage. Our proposal adopts a series of commons-sense measures that do not have costly mandates, which drive up health care costs, or put the federal government between patients and their doctors.
 
Under our proposal, insurance companies would be prohibited from imposing lifetime limits on a consumer. This means that any group health plan or health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance may not establish lifetime limits on the dollar value of benefits for any participant or beneficiary.
 
Under Obamacare, insurance companies are banned from charging an older, sicker individual more than three times what they charge a young healthy person. Actuaries and non-partisan experts agree that this restrictive rating requirement significantly increases health insurance premiums, especially for younger consumers.
 
Our proposal would repeal this costly mandate and return the power of regulating health insurance to the states, which have historically been the primary regulators of health insurance. To stabilize the market initially, our proposal would adopt a age rating ratio that limits the amount an older individual will pay to no more than five times what a younger individual pays in premium dollars (5 to 1) as a federal baseline, since the vast majority of
states already utilized this rating ratio before Obamacare. This less restrictive rating ratio will have the effect of helping to immediately lower health care costs for millions of Americans. However, after the adoption of our proposal, any state could decide they want to instead adopt rating rules that are more or less restrictive than a 5
to 1 ratio. If this were the case, that state would simply need to pass a law opting out of this provision for the
plans it regulates.
 
Our proposal would also require health plans to offer dependent coverage up to age 26, in the interest of
stabilizing the market during the transition. While we believe fewer young consumers will utilize this option as the
cost of health insurance decreases, retaining this policy has a very marginal effect on premiums and provides
consumers with more choices. Similar to the federal baseline for insurance plan rating, any state could choose to
opt out of this provision for the plans it regulates.
 
Guaranteed renewability under our proposal would ensure that patients would be able to renew their coverage—insurers would be prohibited from refusing to renew a health insurance policy solely because of the health status of an individual. Insurance companies would also be banned from making unfair coverage terminations of health coverage. Only in limited circumstances, such as cases of fraud or misrepresentation on behalf of a consumer or failure to pay premiums, could a health insurance company cancel an individual policy. This would give patients peace of mind knowing that a health insurance plan could not simply rescind coverage on a whim. Even in cases of fraud or misrepresentation, health insurance companies would be required to give consumers appropriate prior notice.

http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=871b0ef8-7705-4f72-aef2-e81d01b9c009

[Libertas]

Replacement...

 

 

[richb]

Obamacare doesn't need to be "replaced".    It just needs to be repealed in its entirety. 

If lawmakers want to "help" healthcare, they should be REPEALING laws and regulations,  not creating new ones.

REPEALING is the ONLY way the government can "help" healthcare.   Why is that SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND!!!!!!

[ToddF]

Why prohibit insurance companies from selling limited policies, if that's what somebody wants?

About the only thing good I can see in Coburn's proposal, is to prohibit insurance companies from cancelling policies, as long as the customer keeps a paid up policy.  You don't cancel coverage, when the house catches fire.  I mean, that's the point of insurance.

[IronDioPriest]

Idiots. All the focus has been on the pain of obamacare, and it should be.

But now the pubbies are determined to change the discussion from "Obamacare vs the American People" to "Obamacare vs the Republican plan to kill the poor and sick."

Idiots.

[Glock32]

Why prohibit insurance companies from selling limited policies, if that's what somebody wants?

About the only thing good I can see in Coburn's proposal, is to prohibit insurance companies from cancelling policies, as long as the customer keeps a paid up policy.  You don't cancel coverage, when the house catches fire.  I mean, that's the point of insurance.

Exactly. These "low quality" policies that the bureaucrat masterminds have now decided (on your behalf, whether you GAS or not) are no good, they're exactly the sort of plans that were the perfect choice for young single people. When you're 25 and single, about the only think you might be worried about are expenses from a major incident -- a car crash, something like that.

Well, tough sh*t. Now you've gotta buy a policy that covers OB/GYN visits, the fact of your being a male is of no consequence.

[Libertas]

They need to have universal plans without regard to particular individual need in order for the young and the health to pay for the older and the sicker...it's all meant to be one-size-fits-all and one-premium-for-all no matter the circumstance...or their scheme will fail...which it is because the young people, bless their hearts, aren't signing up for this shyt in the droves they they thought!

[Glock32]

Yeah.  "They" issue new edicts allowing people to stay on their parents' plans until age 26, and now "they" act surprised when a bunch of 22 year olds aren't rushing out to buy a plan.

[richb]

Exactly. These "low quality" policies that the bureaucrat masterminds have now decided (on your behalf, whether you GAS or not) are no good, they're exactly the sort of plans that were the perfect choice for young single people. When you're 25 and single, about the only think you might be worried about are expenses from a major incident -- a car crash, something like that.

As the single person who has no health insurance who had a car accident last summer,  here is another reason you don't need "health insurance".    The car insurance covered (most) of my hospital bill. 

So even that isn't a good reason for health insurance.    It probably wouldn't have covered anything since the bill was "only" about $600,  well below any deductible.