Obamacare News Blog

Brown’s Victory May Slow Down Health Care Reform

While many think last night’s victory by Republican Scott Brown was a major blow to health care reform, we think that this is a perfect opportunity to allow Washington make changes to the bill that will have a lasting positive impact. And it looks as if the White House may agree with us on this issue. According to the AP, President Obama urged lawmakers today not to try to force the current bill through but to scale the proposal down to what he called “those elements of the package that people agree on.”

In there lies the rub….what do people agree on when it comes to health care reform?  Most people would say NOTHING. We, however, see a common ground. We think most everyone agrees that the growth rate of the cost of health treatment and insurance premiums in the United States is out of hand.  We think health care reform should focus on controlling those costs.  Rather than passing an enormous bill, we suggest small changes to our health care system that would make immediate impact to the cost of health care. The first bill should be called the Transparency of Cost Act.  The bill that required health providers such as Doctors and Hospitals to alert patients of the estimated cost of health related procedure.  This would directly address cost issues as many patients would be motivated to seek out better priced procedures.  For example, if one facility charges $3000 for an MRI and another $1000, those patients with larger deductibles or coinsurance would select the less expensive option. This would save the patient and the health insurance company’s money and force the more expensive facility to reconsider their high price.  This is a common sense that everyone can get behind.