Seven essential musts for health-care reform

In the health-care debate, I believe there are at least seven essential provisions that any plan should contain.

1. Prohibit paying out any benefits for illegal aliens.

2. Prohibit paying out any benefits for abortion on demand.

3. Level the playing field so that all taxpayers are treated the same. Now employer-provided health benefits are tax-free to the workers. A simple way to correct this would be to allow self-employed taxpayers to deduct the cost of their health insurance on their tax returns. This is basic business that all people be treated equally.

4. Any plan proposed should include strong tort reforms. Unrestrained lawsuits add an estimated 15 percent to 20 percent to the cost of health care. Doctors order many tests and procedures to protect themselves against frivolous lawsuits.

5. Regulate the pharmaceutical industry, including common-sense reforms such as allowing for negotiation for better pricing. Shorten the protracted period of time that a drug company could have exclusive rights to a medicine that often has been developed with public money at public institutions. Regulate the pricing of drugs so that we would not have the situation where the policy of "whatever the market will bear" is not the rule.

6. Regulate how hospitals charge their patients. Now hospitals offer doctors lucrative contracts to keep their rooms filled. While some doctors are having difficulties with reimbursement rates for Medicare and Medicaid, most are doing quite well. How can the medical profession -- mostly educated in schools financed with public funds and practicing in hospitals built mostly with public funds and receiving much of their income from public funds -- complain that they are not being treated fairly? I do not expect doctors to be paid with a couple of chickens, as many used to experience. But I do not think it is fair to place them in a position to charge the fantastic amounts that many of them do.

7. Increase the supply of doctors. This would help to slow the rise in costs of medical services.

There is no magic bullet when dealing with health care, but these seven common-sense provisions would be a good start.

David Kelley is a Steele, Mo., resident.