Make healthcare cheaper, better, and more accessible to all. Support Rand Paul’s S. 222. Retweet
This bill will restore huge chunks of free market healthcare. You can read about the many benefits to you in the sample letter to Congress below.
Reminder:When you send your letter, you may have a Rep or Senator that is not current. Well, a new Downsize DC is coming! We’re down to “nitpicky” details. We hope to beta test the site soon. The launch will be announced shortly thereafter. No investment in money or time is being made to update our current software. But action cannot wait. Your letter will still be delivered to the other incumbents.
The hardwired letter to Congress {old Educate the Powerful link, no longer available} reads…
Co-sponsor Senator Rand Paul’s “Obamacare Replacement Act: (S. 222)”
You can copy or edit the following sample text for your personal letter to Congress…
Rand Paul’s plan is an excellent start. It would…
* Provide a two-year buffer period in which people with pre-existing conditions (PEC) could still get coverage. That would allow time for the market to solve the PEC problem in other ways (as described below).
* Make the cost of individual insurance tax-deductible. This would give individual policies the same tax treatment as employer-provided policies. Most likely, the number of individually owned policies would expand. With more people owning their own policy, the PEC problem would plummet. PEC is mostly a politician-created problem that happens when people get sick after losing their job (and therefore their insurance).
* Give citizens a tax-credit of up to $5,000 for contributions to an HSA (Health Savings Account).
* Eliminate the ceiling on HSA contributions.
* Remove the stipulation that you must have a high-deductible healthcare plan in order to have an HSA.
* Allow citizens to use HSA funds for insurance premiums.
* Expand the number of things HSA funds cover, including over-the-counter drugs, vitamins and supplements, plus nutrition and exercise programs. One of the great flaws of Obamacare is that it does nothing to preserve health and prevent disease. Doing so would lower the burden on the medical system. Healthier people don’t need as much medical care.
* Allow citizens to band together to lower the cost of buying insurance. Individual Health Pools (IHPs) would give persons the same bargaining power that employer insurance groups currently have. The IHPs could include churches, alumni associations, trade associations, civic groups, or entities formed strictly for establishing an IHP so long as there is no health status requirement for membership. This provision would dramatically reduce the PEC problem.
* Allow physicians to band together to gain bargaining power with insurers, without having to concentrate into big impersonal medical firms.
* Allow doctors to deduct the expense of the uncompensated care they provide, thereby making pro bono services, free clinics, and true charity hospitals more plentiful.
* Allow insurance providers to sell policies nationally. This would remove the cartel control that the insurance industry currently maintains through state legislatures. This would also restore the market for major medical plans. Not only are major medical plans the way insurance is supposed to work, they are also a way to make insurance more affordable and attractive to young, healthy people. This is important because it’s mostly the young who lack coverage. Obamacare used force to require young people to buy expensive plans. But Rand Paul’s plan will attract them by offering them a good deal, without using force.
* Give states flexibility in how they design and manage their Medicaid programs. This would enable experimentation and competition between the 50 states. It would also allow the states to innovate new ways to address the PEC problem.
In short, I think Rand Paul’s bill should become the official Republican bill. Do it.
— END OF SAMPLE LETTER–
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Thanks for being an ACTIVE DC Downsizer,
Perry Willis & Jim Babka
Downsize DC