Hey Congress Staff members read this about Healthcare---

I know those staffers read and post at TD and I don't want to contribute enough money to Cassidy or Kennedy to actually talk to them so maybe one of the political wannabes will read this and pass it on.

quote:

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As you know the government buys more than 50% of the healthcare in the US through various programs the biggest being medicare. It is this fact that causes healthcare cost to continue to rise greater than the rate of inflation.

Because medicare through law establishes a floor on the price of medical services and products no amount of negotiating by consumers or health insurance companies will lower the cost of healthcare. Providers that take medicare cannot sell their service at a lower cost to anyone else than they do to medicare. We should move to get the government out of the business of the direct purchasing of health care.

One way that I see to do this is to move medicare toward vouchers where medicare recipients can buy subscription healthcare services and drug deliveries removing the third party inefficiencies we have today. Give the medicare folks any savings they accomplish through shopping.

I know it is unrealistic to think we can change the entire system this week but I encourage you to advocate for at least an option for medicare people to have vouchers to use. This, I believe, will encourage providers to offer subscription plans and hopefully those plans will take off and give us a better pricing model for healthcare. Certainly making shoppers out of millions of American will lower cost and force efficiencies into the system we badly need.

Please do what you can to add such a measure to whatever bill the Senate comes up with.

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Moving to a different pricing model for healthcare will do a lot to lower cost. If the republicans will just allow the vouchers as an option I think a subscription based pricing model will become reality. Certainly many in the provider business would appreciate the more predictable income flows a subscription plan would provide.

The realist in me knows the Senate is going to take care of the lobbyist and are not really concerned about you and I.

(Graham and Cassidy now want to block grant huge amounts to the states so people like John Bel Edwards can decide our healthcare. Ugh! If they have to do that please do away with the medicare floor so we don't have to compete so much with the government for services.)