Republican senators Richard Burr, Lamar Alexander, and Tom Coburn, along with House Republicans Devin Nunes and Paul Ryan, introduced healthcare reform legislation based on “choice and competition rather than rationing and restrictions to contain costs,” say the lawmakers.
The Patients’ Choice Act would create State Health Insurance Exchanges from which individuals would select health plans providing, at a minimum, the same benefits that members of Congress receive. Insurers would be mandated to cover every individual without regard to health status, but individuals can choose not to be insured. The bill would eliminate the tax break that employers receive for offering health insurance to their workers—a measure that Democrats oppose. Instead, every individual would get a tax rebate of about $2,300, or $5,700 for families, to purchase health insurance from a variety of plans. In addition to the tax credit, low-income families would receive a subsidy to buy a private plan instead of being enrolled in Medicaid in an effort to stop the “open-ended entitlement programs that offer little or no accountability to taxpayers and patients.” Medicare beneficiaries would also choose a private plan, allowing the market to set reimbursement rates.
The legislation would have physicians and hospitals and other healthcare providers forming Accountable Care Organizations, which would receive bonuses for offering better quality care at less cost and for keeping patients healthy. Publishing standards for reporting price, quality, and effectiveness of care would fall to a new organization that would be managed by five commissioners who were appointed by the President. The bill would also dramatically change how medical malpractice cases are adjudicated, with either panels of physicians and lawyers deciding whether negligence occurred and awarding compensation or “health courts” swiftly resolving disputes.
“The Patients’ Choice Act proves that America can have universal health care coverage without the government running our health care system,” stated Ryan. But according to The Wall Street Journal, the Republican bill “has little chance of passage” with the Democrats in control of Congress. “But it reflects some Republican lawmakers' growing dissatisfaction with a bipartisan effort to fix the health-care system.”
