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Healthcare talk draws crowd
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| | | North Fulton business, healthcare and political leaders filled the Greater North Fulton Chamber’s offices to overflowing for Rep. Tom Price’s talk on the future of healthcare.
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July 08, 2009
If Congress follows the advice of U.S. Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., healthcare in the United States will be patient-empowered, not government-driven.
Price spoke on "The Future of Healthcare" to more than 100 business, healthcare and political leaders at the Greater North Fulton Chamber of Commerce offices July 1.
"Our desire was to fix the system in the right way, because the status quo is unacceptable wherever you are in the system: provider, insurer, patient, relative," Price said.
The alternative to a government-controlled system is not more power in the hands of insurance companies, he said.
"I really believe the other large group that ought to be empowered is the patient," Price said. "Where are we going to allow medical decisions to be made? Patients and families with their doctors? Or is it going to be the federal government?"
A negative of government-run plans is that they crowd everyone else out, Price said. Such a plan would move 120 million people from personal, private health insurance to a government-run program, a bad idea according to Price.
The second bad idea he addressed is imposing mandates for insurance coverage on employers or individuals. Under a current plan being discussed, employers that didn't provide healthcare coverage would have to pay into a communal pot. In another, individuals would have to pay 2 percent of their wages in taxes if they didn't have proof of health insurance.
Proposals already in Congress would ban medical savings plans and high-deductible, catastrophic-care plans.
"[So] not only would they be unavailable, they would be illegal," Price said. "I believe that ceding the idea of what quality care is to the federal government is terrible. What's right for you may not be right for me."
Price said affordability, accessibility and quality should be the keystones of healthcare. He also stressed universal coverage and defined contribution.
The biggest problem, said Price, is that at some point during the year, 45 million working Americans aren't insured. Reasons include a change in jobs or refusing coverage from an employer.
"You can't have a system where you've got that many people uninsured when you don't allow cost shifting," Price said.
Cost shifting is a sliding payment scale based on economic status.
Price said his grandfather took care of folks not able to pay much by charging them less. Those who could afford more, paid more. Today it is illegal to do that kind of cost shifting, he said.
Brian Mould, one of the business people attending Price's talk, offered a unique perspective on the English healthcare system often mentioned as a model for changes to the system in the United States.
"Unlike some people here, I actually grew up in England," he said.
The system has its good and bad points, he said.
"Mother couldn't get her knee replacement for forever. It made her life a misery for probably 10 years until she basically paid for it herself," Mould said.
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Tags: Alpharetta, Johns Creek, Milton, Roswell
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