“BentnWasted Health Care Plan 2009”

After listening to the mire of multiple federal health care plans, I’ve decided to come up with some suggestions of my own. These “suggestions” rely on common sense, rather than politics or political parties. I call my plan "HealthAid".

According to various statistics in the media, about 46 million Americans have no health insurance coverage. Since the population of the United States is approximately 340 million that makes 14% without insurance…it also means that 86% have it!

Fixing waste, obsolete paper based records, graft, corruption, and over charging of health insurance companies, high malpractice insurance premiums along with frivolous lawsuits and the need for caps on claims and awards, windfall profits of pharmaceutical companies, etc require no 1000+ pages of legislation. In fact, most can probably be cured with an Executive Order. Such “fixes” would not only cost little or nothing to implement, but would save hundreds of billions of dollars/yr.

I believe in most instances health care should be rationed to some extent, in order to keep costs low. Insurance should cover accidents, life threatening disease treatments, pre-existing conditions, basic yearly medicals, vision as well as dental care. Due to overpopulation, it should also cover “Family Planning”.

Basic insurance coverage need not cover routine visits for a common cold or "I feel achy" using the ER as General Care, self-caused injuries and health problems from drug use, alcohol addiction or smoking (which are personal choices and responsibility). Again “common sense” prevails, which also to me implies rationing of treatment in the elderly. The elderly that are over age 75 should not be eligible for organ transplants, massive life extending procedures, or treatments that are expensive, at least as far as insurance coverage is concerned. To be fair, I believe we also have to extend that same rationale to premature infants, coma patients, and severely disabled. I'm not talking about "Death Panels" here, I'm talking about expensive useless care. It’s just common sense.

The “Bentnwasted Plan” would therefore consist of the following:

1. Fix existing problems and inefficiencies in existing programs.
2. Create “Standards” of Health Care with Hospitals, Insurance Companies, Doctors, and other health professionals.
3. Insure the 14% uninsured with basic “catastrophic” health care.
4. Caps on malpractice premiums and awards.
5. Promote “Wellness” with annual checkups.
6. Fund Medicare and Medicaid.
7. Ban all Pharmaceutical advertising on TV, just as tobacco and liquor are currently.


This is not meant to be the “Fix all”, but a start, a method of eliminating the politics and month long/year long debates and trillions of dollars in costs and get on with other issues!