If I could do my own health care bill, here’s what it would have:

1) Lawsuit costs lowered. Limiting the scope of lawsuits would have an impact beyond just the costs insurance companies have to pass on to doctors (who pass those on to consumers). It would lower

.. a)health insurance costs because less medical care costs the less the insurer has to pay – and the less premiums they would need from consumers.
Defensive medicine (i.e. the extra treatment doctors/nurses have to do to cover their butts in case they are sued.)

.. b) Legal fees. Even when patients win lawsuits, you know who wins really, don’t you? The lawyers, of course.

2) More medical schools to address the doctor/nurse shortage in America. We’ve been covering that through our immigration policies but every doctor we steal from the rest of the world means that someone out there has to do without. There’s plenty of Americans who want to be health professionals, who would be good at it, but there’s no place for them because our nation’s medical schools are so limited. That’s the bottleneck.

We can build more – lots more – but that costs money. Spending health care money on doctors and nurses instead of lawyers and bureaucrats is a spending program we can understand. It puts our health care priorities right.

It will also ultimately address doctor fees. – Law of supply and demand: shortages drives prices up; abundance drives them down.

3) Insurance portability across state lines. Maybe the Department of Commerce will have to do some regulating but the ease on the insurance pressure on a mobile America will be worth it.

Now for something really, really radical . . . (Drumroll!)

4) Start New Health Insurance Companies. Why not? This is something those limosine liberals could easily do. Obama wants to give the insurance companies some “competition”. he calls their profits “obscene”. Then just reducing profit margins to the “spectacular” level so they can produce more generous insurance provisions would quickly transform the industry. – And they wouldn’t have to worry about Republicans, filibusters, or even Senate reconciliation provisions.

Icing on the cake (listen up Charles Rangell, Christopher Dodd, et al) you can make yourselves a whole pile of money, to boot! – Of course, this last presumes that Obama’s rhetoric against the insurance companies were true.

- Alright, so 3 out of 4 ideas isn’t such a bad batting average!

www.jacklemoine.com