Issues

Controlling costs will make health-care more affordable and accessible

Employers and individuals alike continue to struggle with the rising cost of health-care. The result – many businesses can no longer afford coverage for valued employees, while individuals who do not have health-care at work simply go without. It’s an unacceptable situation that leaves few options and difficult decisions for everyone involved.

Some elected officials say the answer is massive and costly government-run health-care programs that promise coverage for all uninsured residents. What they don’t tell people is that this simply leads to reshuffling costs and then looking for ways to pay for these programs. After all, it’s one thing to say you’ll offer coverage to those desperately in need of health insurance. It’s quite another to find ways to pay for it without stressing already overburdened taxpayers.

One commonsense solution to address the difficult issue of health-care reform is to take meaningful steps to control costs. By reducing costs, more people and employers, particularly small businesses that are today’s major job creators, could actually afford coverage.

Pennsylvania took such a positive first step in 2007 with enactment of a law to reduce medical errors, and their associated costs to the health-care system. But that’s just the beginning.

Here are more commonsense solutions that will help lower costs, increasing the availability of adequate, accessible and affordable health care for all Pennsylvanians:

• Reform Pennsylvania’s unbalanced legal system. A more predictable insurance system for health-care providers will help lower premium costs and will stop the costly practice of “defensive medicine” by doctors fearful of unfair medical malpractice lawsuits
• Encourage the use of best practices by health insurers and health-care facilities in order to eliminate excessive and unnecessary costs and ensure the delivery of high-quality care
• Encourage use of wellness programs in the workplace and among the general public to prevent the need for costly medical treatments
• Give small employers that typically can’t afford to offer health benefits the ability to offer employees the option of basic benefits plans without costly government-mandated coverage that employee might not ever need.
• Conduct a cost/benefit analysis of existing health-care insurance mandates (Pennsylvania has more than 30 of them), and repeal any mandate in which the cost outweighs the benefit