Innovations in Health Care - Opportunities for Reform?

Specialty hospitals are an important marketplace innovation that provides high-quality healthcare and present patients with addition choices for meeting their healthcare needs. Prohibiting the operation of specialty hospitals impedes competition—the competition that encourages higher quality and lower costs in health care. At issue is the decision of Congress to assert its power to prohibit certain businesses from participating in federal health programs—will Congress allow true competition or embrace the community hospital monopoly on healthcare services?

Medicaid spending grew 97.8 % over the past 10 years; the program will cost taxpayers $338 billion in 2005 alone.  Unequivocally, a financial crisis is looming. Instead of cutting services, beneficiaries, or substantially raising taxes, South Carolina has creatively proposed the use of marketplace principles in Medicaid. Medicaid beneficiaries will be given the option to escape the Medicaid ghetto and enroll in private health insurance.

Dr. Coburn Praises Ruling Lifting Ban on Specialty Hospitals (August 9, 2006)

Dr. Coburn introduced a bill to improve Health Savings Accounts. "A consumer-driven health care market will not only control costs, it will improve access to health care and markedly improve the quality of care for all Americans,” Dr. Coburn said. “Consumers should be in charge of making health care decisions, not insurance companies or government bureaucrats. Expanding health savings accounts will help put consumers back in charge of their own health care.”

Dr. Coburn's Prescription for a Healthy America, March 21, 2007:

Are you frustrated with the rising costs of health care? Would you like to be able to pick your own doctor or health care provider? Would you like to select your own health care insurance? Do you find it difficult to understand what benefits are covered by your insurance? Have you been denied coverage for medically necessary care? Do you wonder why your employer gets a tax break for your health care but you don't?

On March 21, 2007, Dr. Coburn introduced the Universal Health Care Choice and Access Act, a comprehensive health care reform bill which addresses all of these problems and does so without creating new government programs or bureaucracies. This proposal ensures universal coverage for affordable health care for all Americans with tax rebates that would allow every patient to select their own health care plan and provider. We will move closer to this goal when we promote the same innovation and choice in health care that we see in every other American industry. Choosing health care in this country should be more like a visit to Wal-Mart rather than the Department of Motor Vehicles! To read more about Dr. Coburn's plan to solve the health care crisis in America, click here. Read about it in the Wall Street Journal here: "Republican Rx"

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