AAPS Response To Trump’s Election: 10 Solutions That Put Patients First

I am taking the liberty of republishing from AAPS the following set of recommendations:

Reform Issues:

• Overregulation and mandates restrict access, stifle innovation, impede transparency, block competition & raise costs.
• Fraud, waste, and shortages are rampant because of special favors to middlemen.
• Employer-based and government-run insurance plans incentivize both rationing and waste, and are not true insurance..
• Medicare and Medicaid are bankrupting the federal government, states, and doctors.
• In the era of COVID, the consequences of usurping patient and physician autonomy and freedoms became increasingly apparent and dangerous.

Proposed Solutions:  

1. End mask, vaccine, and other mandates and policies that intrude on patient autonomy. This also includes protecting Americans from World Health Organization policies.
2. Protect physician and patient freedom of speech in all venues, including the Internet. The government and media must not limit speech.
3. Protect physician and patient autonomy in treatment and vaccination decisions. Early treatment for COVID saved lives and should not have been improperly blocked by government or other bureaucrats. Vaccine mandates hurt vulnerable patients at low risk for COVID and must end as should laws indemnifying manufacturers from liability, like the 1986   National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, the PREP Act and CARES Act. Agencies like FDA and CDC should not allow those involved in decisions about approvals and guidelines to have any financial conflicts of interest. Industry funding and staffing of the agencies should also end.
4. End regulations blocking alternatives to ACA, employment-based, Medicare, and Medicaid plans, while allowing those who wish to keep their current government plan to do so.
5. Encourage competition, transparency, site neutrality. Health care entities receiving taxpayer-subsidized funds from any source must disclose all prices. Price controls do more harm than good, particularly when imposed in a discriminatory manner that benefits hospitals at the expense of independent medical practices. Other barriers that inhibit competition should be removed, such as Certificate of Need (CON) laws, policies prohibiting physician-owned hospitals, legalized kickbacks by PBMs and GPOs, discriminatory FINCEN reporting requirements, and abuse of non-profit status by hospitals and other entities controlling the medical care marketplace.
6. Decouple Social Security benefits from Medicare Part A. Citizens should be permitted to disenroll from Medicare Part A without forgoing Social Security payments. This would immediately decrease government spending and open the potential for a true insurance market for the over-65 population.
7. Expand Health Savings Accounts (HSAs).  Examples of needed reform include repealing the requirement that an individual making a tax-deductible contribution to an HSA be covered by a high deductible health care plan; increasing the maximum HSA contribution level; making HSAs compatible with Direct Primary Care (DPC), allowing Medicare eligible individuals to contribute to an HSA. HSA reform will help end tax discrimination. Individuals’ payments for medical care should not be taxed differently than payments made by employers.
8. Repeal Medicaid rules that decrease Medicaid patients’ access to independent physicians. ACA requires physicians ordering and prescribing for Medicaid patients to be enrolled in Medicaid. This creates barriers for Medicaid patients who seek care from independent physicians but wish to use Medicaid benefits for prescriptions, diagnostics, and hospital fees. This is a particular problem for Medicaid patients seeking treatment for opioid addiction.
9. End Restrictions on Health Sharing Ministries. Open the door for secular charitable sharing plans. Health Care Sharing Plans engage in voluntary sharing and are not a contractual transfer of risk. And Encourage indemnity insurance and competition instead of managed care HMO plans that trap patients in limited networks of physicians and facilities.
10. Increase options for addressing pre-existing conditions. Invigoration of competition, by implementing the above changes, would bring a variety of products for patients with pre-existing conditions, including reinsurance, and inexpensive guaranteed issue and renewability protections, and most importantly, lower overall cost of care.

Conclusion: Congress has passed law after law that disrupts the patient-physician relationship, corrupts medical decision making, and increases costs. The COVID era demonstrated how overregulation and regulatory capture are a greater threat to our nation than ever.   Harmful laws and policies cannot be fixed by adding new regulatory burdens or further usurping patient and physician autonomy. True reform starts with repealing laws and correcting errors, restoring the freedom, under constitutionally limited government, that made America great.