Health Care Reform

Health Care reform ought to have a number of free market characteristics for best efficiency.
Kaiser Permanente, as I understand it, is non-profit and membership based. A membership based or cooperative healthcare establishment might give ownership to the patient and therefore be more focused on serving the customer. I can imagine a membership based health care service provider that covers a region.

Access to health care can be expanded by creating a market for health care services that can be exchanged between healthcare service providers. In this case a health care service provider can invest in a specific set of specialties that can be offered to another health care provider’s patients. I can imagine a patient who needs care in California but is a member of a health care provider in Florida. The Health care provider in Florida could use the health care exchange to help cover the cost of the care obtained by the patient in California.

Another scenario is a patient who is a member of Provider A obtaining Cancer care from Provider B. In this case, Provider B, specializes in the Cancer Care while Provider A did not invest in that specialty. An open market for health care service can help providers to defray cost by exchanging services as a method of obtaining specialty care for their members.

Another suggestion is a public sponsored standards body that can create regulations and standards for administration and digital communication. This speaks towards the President’s idea for reducing administrative cost in the health care system.

In Summary, I believe that a membership based non-profit health care provider might be the low cost model that might provide good competition between providers. I believe that the creation of a Market or Exchange for health care services might allow health care providers a method to achieve an economy of scale by providing a vehicle for selling their spare or idle capacity.

A non-profit member-owned regional health care provider would be a more efficient alternative to a national public program. This type of regional provider would be more nimble with less administrative overhead than a national or state administrated public option. A non-profit member-owned regional health care provider is likely to be better received by conservatives who have more faith in private enterprise.