Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

McCain vs Obama: Common Ground, Pt.10 – Further cost reductions and wrap-up. issues.

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Mr. Obama is claiming that he can “reduce health [insurance/]care spending by 8% and save each taxpayer $2,500 with his ideas,” again, as per the FactBox article. Of the ways to reduce health insurance/care spending, there is also agreement between the two on a plan to support re-import drugs. What this means is that “U.S. providers could buy them from countries that have negotiated lower prices with pharmaceutical companies, as the FactBox article explains. This would mean expanding avenues of development and the wider use of generic drugs. In order to reduce doctors’ costs, Mr. McCain wants to pass tort reform to limit malpractice lawsuits and place caps on damages. He believes that malpractice suits greatly increase health insurance/care costs to consumers because of the high rates placed on physicians to get protective insurance.

The track Mr. Obama chooses is beef up our antitrust laws. By lowering doctors’ insurance costs, he believes this savings can be passed on to consumers by lowering health insurance/care costs. Both candidates favor more walk-in clinics. These should placed in shopping areas and public places to encourage more citizens to get routine health checks as a further reduction of health insurance/care costs.

There is some agreement between the two hopefuls about fixing some of the ills ridden in our current private health insurance industry. The most glaring would be things like “the inability to obtain coverage for many applicants with pre-existing medical conditions, the cost of coverage and the ability of health insurers in many states to cancel coverage” because of rescission, as explained in a USA Today article. Rescission is the practice of dropping patients when they become ‘too expensive’. Both candidates have plans to address these issues, but details are a little sketchy at this point.