Health Care -- It's the COMPETITION , Stupid!

As I said THOUSANDS of times in this blog, we need a NATIONAL SINGLE PAYERHealth care system.

OK. People like their particular (current) health care plan. FINE.

First Rule. Nothing changes (today).

Second Rule. The United States will phase into a Unified, National system.

Third Rule. Enrollment in Health care is not a benefit, it is a requirement.

Fourth Rule. Payment of health care WILL shift from employers to the government, but not at once.

Fifth Rule. We cannot do (implement) this alone, we need partners.

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How do we reconcile these rules:

VERY EASY

Rule 5 starts to make this a unified system.

Rule 5 (Partners) tells us:

a) That current health insurance companies will not be thrown out of business today.

b) Current health care companies will become managers of the business (for now) as agents for the government. They will be given X (2 or 3) year contracts to manage and consolidate their health plans together.

b1) These management companies (they will no longer be called "health care companies", since they will be managing the NATIONAL health care system!) will start by combining their existing employer plans, and making the coverage levels equal between plans, working to achieve economies of scale.
b1- Example: Lets presume that Met Life handles both AT&T and IBM's health care plans.
They will work to merge these plans, keeping the best (and lowest costs) for both plans, so that instead of one plan with 100,000 employees, they have 200,000 employees, and can achieve more economies of scale.

c) As the years go by, these merged health plans will become more standard, and will become the standards (best practices) for ALL companies. As more and more of these plans are merged, duplicate providers in an area will be reduced and merged.

The fifth Rule, and paying for management of the health care system will lead to the fourth rule, that the government will begin to be responsible for health care in the country.

Rule Three: Mandatory Enrollment:
The (two or three) regional health care management companies will immediately start to enroll the unemployed, and uninsured. Payment for premiums will be {do something here,paid -contributed to} for by the government (which? {state/federal>})

Rule 2 and 5 are similar. The better managed and the better RUN management companies will get renewal contracts (just like the real world).

Rule 1: Everyone gets to keep their current plan as is.

Rule 1 corollary: There will be two basic plans that will evolve. Current plan (Status Quo), and the newly (to be developed) National plan (similar to, and pegged to the congressional health care plans).

These are a few thoughts.