Pennsylvania health insurance reform is coming. But if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has her way, you can expect to see your Pennsylvania individual and family health insurance rates rise faster than you ever imagined. However, there are some alternative solutions that will cost less, expand coverage and improve health care quality.

Five health care reform ideas that should be implemented (courtesy of Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Paul Howard) are:

1.     Eliminate the tax exclusion for health care and replace it with a tax deduction or tax credit. Typical savings could be used to reduce the cost of individual health insurance policies.

2.     Increase and expand funding to high-risk pools so that major pre-existing conditions would be better covered.

3.     Let health insurance companies sell insurance across state lines. If Pennsylvania consumers do not want or need expensive “Cadillac” health plans with features they will never use, why force them to buy these plans?

4.     Eliminate waste, abuse and fraud in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Fraud schemes cheat taxpayers out of billions of dollars each year, including many in Pennsylvania. Let’s tackle this problem first before revamping the entire health care system.

5.     Enact tort reform that will end lawsuit abuse. This change would reduce the federal budget deficits by approximately $54 billion over the next 10 years.

As the owner and founder of Pahealthinsurancecoverage.com, Pennsylvania’s leading resource for affordable health care, I sincerely support health care reform. But let’s do it the right way.

You may view the Holtz-Eakin/Howard article here. If you would like to instantly view, compare or apply for high-quality Pennsylvania health care, please click on the “Get Instant Quote” button at the top of the page. Your personal information will never be shared with any other party.

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