A group of bipartisan legislators are advocating that states be allowed to try their own approaches to providing medical care to the uninsured, improving quality of care, and controlling medical costs instead of waiting for Congress to create wholesale healthcare reform for the nation, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Three bills have been introduced in Congress urging states to develop their own reform plans, which would then be reviewed by a commission or task force and the most likely to succeed would proceed to Congress for quick approval. Supporters of the concept say that using states as a laboratory for healthcare reform has several advantages. Implementing change on a small-scale level would reveal which ideas may work for the country and which are doomed to fail. Also, because states differ economically and politically, perhaps states are better off developing solutions that uniquely suit their populations. And because Congress is so deadlocked on healthcare reform, states may have to be the catalyst for any improvement in health care in the near future. “Universal coverage is necessary,” U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., told the Sentinel. “But I think states will vary on exactly how they go about it. The excitement of this is that it doesn’t feel ideological. It feels like different ideas getting a chance to fairly compete with each other.”
