The Basics
To ensure that hardworking citizens can obtain quality healthcare and insurance at a reasonable cost, the state needs to pursue policies dedicated to expanding affordable healthcare options for children and families, modernizing and reforming Medicaid, and enacting medical malpractice reform.
Affordable Healthcare for Children – Reduce the number of uninsured children by expanding access to quality care
• Subsidize private insurance premiums for children from poorer families
• Reinstitute the children’s health insurance tax credit
• Provide more options for children and others with mild chronic conditions
Affordable Healthcare for Working Families – Give families more control over their healthcare
• Increase healthcare access for poor and working-class adults
• Create “flexible benefits” insurance – i.e., customized plans that offer families coverage that best suits their needs
• Permit families to purchase less expensive, out-of-state insurance plans
• Enable small business employees to use pretax income to purchase private health insurance
• Allow private, prepaid care agreements between doctors and consumers
• Encourage greater transparency regarding employer-based healthcare costs
• Pool risk in the individual and small group markets to create savings
Affordable Healthcare for the Poor and Uninsured – Increase insurance options for the most vulnerable
• Enable low-income citizens to purchase affordable, customized insurance plans
• Offer inexpensive, flexible benefits plans to young “invincibles”
Medicaid Reform – Focus on critical needs and give enrollees more choices
• Focus on critical needs
• Provide private insurance subsidy options
• Help the poor first
• Revise long-term care options to curb costs
Medical Malpractice Reform – Cap malpractice awards so as to lower premium costs
• Rein in trial lawyers by capping malpractice awards and exorbitant fees
• Require nonbinding arbitration so as to reduce court costs for malpractice suits
