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By JOHN LEKANDER
Rappahannock News Contributing Writer
The health care reform issue is now mired in discussions that are wavering far from the objectives of true health care reform. Leaders in health care reform must remain frimly targeted on their main goal.
It is important not to tamper with the impetus that has brought us our medical technology envied throughout the planet. The goals must provide: that first, all citizens own individual health insurance policies (total inclusion), second, a single payer mechanism and third, to control spiraling medical inflation, sone type of managed competition.
To enjoy the privilege of partaking in the benfits of our nation’s health care system, which receives close to 50 percent federal subsidization, each individual should be required to purchase a health insurance policy. This requirement could be analogous to the fees and licensing that are required before we are allowed to operate a motor vehicle on our nation’s highways. While providing total inclusion, this step strives to ensure that all citezens share equally in health care and do hot burden society. Also, it is clear that when a person owns a product, as opposed to having the product appear free, they take better care of it, or in this case, individual ownership of health care would promote prudent use of benefits.
Total inclusion would create a myriad of solutions to our health care challenge. Everyone would own an identical policy, provided by the carrier of their choice. Pre-existing conditions would no longer be a concern with constant coverage, which also would eliminate the confusion that exists today when one changes his status, i.e., employed-unemployed-retired, etc. Since all policies would be identical, the ambiguous language that allows unscrupulous insurance companies to sell bogus policies would be eliminated. A reduction of adminstrative costs, which total nearly 25 percent of our
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