Political support for the expansion of Medicaid in Georgia is on support and its prognosis might be terminal. However, this does not mean that there is no pathway forward for the individuals seeking healthcare solutions. It is the same pathway that managed to solve most of our problems: innovation.
Every proposal of Medicaid expansion has mostly been a reaction to all the failures of the federal policy in attempting to take care of the “coverage gap.”
Nonetheless, the gap is a mere symptom of the original disease. Unfortunately, the Affordable Care Act did very little to make health care affordable. Actually, it worsened the conditions that escalated health costs – government intervention and regulation.
ObamaCare put more patients right into the system without any corresponding increase in medical practitioners while additionally forcing insurance plans to swathe more services. Consequently, this made them more like full-service warranties and less like insurance.
We do not expect car insurance to take care of oil changes or homeowners insurance to cover for lawn service – why expect health insurance to pay for regular doctor visits?
Skyrocketing costs have currently turned most Americans into medical refugees. Patients travel to foreign countries in order to obtain 50%-80% discounts on procedures in the less regulated markets.
Rather than transforming Georgians into medical refugees, the state ought to innovate and provide deregulated choices. This will go miles in attracting medical tourists to Georgia.
Addressing the primary cause (s) of unaffordable care through adopting market-based, patient-centered reforms as well as discovering to drastically reducing the burdens of regulation in the healthcare market is much better than policy-makers negotiating on how to pay for the federally micromanages insurance plans.
Begin by bringing down the barriers to entry for healthcare professionals together with all the burdens of limits and licensure on the scope of practice.
Reducing charity care, medical cost-sharing, out-of-state practitioners, direct-pay models, and barriers on telemedicine & concierge is very much possible. Explore options for clients for service agreements that include particular tort reforms as well as damage caps.
Moreover, deregulate insurance plans for individuals that are exempt from ObamaCare. Deregulation should be allowed to facilitate innovation and decentralization.
Information technology has witnessed a rapid escalation in innovation and quality with a huge decline in host. Meanwhile, the much regulated healthcare industry has experienced totally opposite.