Dr. Carson on Health Care

Here is part two of my small articles on Dr. Ben Carson.  In this case we will address health care. 

First off, Dr. Carson will replace Obama Care and much of the traditional system with what he calls Health Empowerment Accounts (HEA's).  An HEA is an actual account that is made for each individual citizen in the country that can be used to cover out of pocket costs for healthcare, health insurance premiums and any other incurred medical expenses.  The idea is to set up an apparatus by which people can place money, tax free, into an account to help pay for all their medical expenses.  In fact it will even be transferable from family member to family member as well to help accommodate other people's health care needs and even be inheritable.  Carson's plan revolves around the HEA's as the central pillar to make healthcare personal again between Doctors and Patients.  (Note: I personally think that these accounts should gain interest so as to reward people for saving their money to pay for their health care).

One of the basic ideas is to make out of pocket costs affordable so Carson would deregulate parts of the FDA to make drugs and healthcare cheaper.  Additionally, the owners of the account can link their HEA's to a health insurance company with a high deductible plan of the individual's choice.  The idea is to make it so that insurance only helps to pay for something when the cost of health care would bankrupt an individual.  Basically health insurances would go back to being a safety net, all the while creating health care plans that are cheaper so as to accommodate the more patient centered model of health care that Carson is trying to establish here.  

To further facilitate this goal, Carson wants to fix Medicare and Medicaid.  In this case, Medicare and Medicaid will change how they operate as HEA's will be the conduit by which these changes work.  For Medicare, Medicare beneficiaries will receive fixed dollar amounts to their HEA's to buy a health care insurance plan(s) of their choice.  No more government deciding what and how to cover a health issue, but instead seniors getting to choose their own plan in the private marketplace and their premiums being paid for or partially paid for by the government via the government's contribution to the HEA.  Basically, this is how the current Medicare part D works save the fact that patients get to choose which health insurance companies to get coverage from and not the government.  This Medicare version, which I assume eliminates parts A, B, C and D, will have the eligibility adjusted as well. In this case, the age to receive such benefits will be changed to age 70 by adjusting the age requirement by two months per year once implemented.  Medicaid will work similarly with the poor able to pick and choose their own health insurance coverage and be able to save to cover certain out of pocket costs  The only difference is that States will be block granted money by the Federal government by giving the States a fixed dollar amount to be given to the Medicaid recipients (States decide who qualify and how much is to be given to each individual) in their HEA account to use to buy cheap insurance plans and pay for any out of pocket health expenses.  

Final Thought:  Dr. Carson is using this system to eliminate most of the government waste by eliminating the States and the Federal Government's bureaucracy that revolves around Medicare and Medicaid as they turn into a re-insurer type system, or even a Social Security type system that gives money to people rather than decide how people are to spend their money.  HEA's as the backbone of the system aid in this by giving people options to save their money and potentially with Carson's tax plan not pay the higher 14.9% rate (see yesterday's article for details).   Carson is also assuming that with people buying insurance individually with this new system, rather than businesses as with the current system, that health insurance plans will become cheaper and thus affordable to accommodate a customer base that has a more limited budget.  All this gets government and even to a certain extent, businesses out of our personal health, and back into the hands of us, the individuals.