Even More Conservative Health Reform Ideas

Conn Carroll / October 05, 2009

President Barack Obama consistently accuses Americans who are skeptical about his health care plan of supporting the stats quo. Like much of what Obama says about health care, this simply isn’t true. Louisana Gov. Bobby Jindal has an op-ed in the Washington Post identifying 10 ideas to increase the affordability and quality of health care:

• Voluntary purchasing pools: Give individuals and small businesses the opportunities that large businesses and the government have to seek lower insurance costs.
• Portability: As people change jobs or move across state lines, they change insurance plans. By allowing consumers to “own” their policies, insurers would have incentive to make more investments in prevention and in managing chronic conditions.
• Lawsuit reform: It makes no sense to ignore one of the biggest cost drivers in the system — the cost of defensive medicine, largely driven by lawsuits. Worse, many doctors have stopped performing high-risk procedures for fear of liability. (more…)