From the May 2017 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine

Again, this requires that pricing be the same for all the insurance patients, but equal or lower for cash or HAS payments. The hospitals, laboratories or doctors’ office will be compensated at fair, free-market prices for their goods and services, as is the case with every other business in the U.S. They will all also save significant money without having to submit massive paperwork to the insurance companies and wait for payment that may get denied or have to chase patients for copays that notoriously never come. Subsidies to lower-income populations will be given as deposits into their HSAs for routine care, so patients can decide how to best spend their health care dollars alongside an insurance component that is used only for emergencies.

This outlines the only reasonable method of reform that addresses the true underlying problems that are driving health care costs out of control. It would be an effective means of dramatically lowering spiraling costs that would effectively provide a truly free-market system with savings that would allow for universal insurance coverage for most everyone and that both reasonable Republicans and Democrats could support. If the key problems of health care cost are not the focus of the next health care reform plan, it, too, will be doomed to fail.


About the author: Kent Holtorf is the medical director at Holtorf Medical Group.

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