Senate GOP plan: cut red tape, focus on individuals.(Grand Old Party, health insurance, information technology usage)

Publication: Medicine & Health

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COPYRIGHT 2004 Thomson Financial Inc.

A Senate Republican task force released a many-faceted health-care proposal May 11 that leaders say would increase access to coverage and care and decrease costs for public coverage programs and for U.S. health care overall.

Titled Cost, Coverage, Care: Personalized Solutions to America's Health Care Challenges, the plan would enhance use of information technology and data in health care while decreasing red tape.

But the proposal's primary focus reflects the new GOP mantra on health care, heard with increasing frequency in recent months from Bush administration officials as well as legislators: Health care is an individual thing.

To increase access to care, the plan would rely heavily on a variety of mechanisms to foster consumerism--such as high-deductible coverage, health savings accounts, and faster production of better quality data--that supporters say could drive down costs, in part by encouraging each patient to be a more prudent purchaser of the exact care and coverage that he or she needs.

The panel, headed by Senate Health, Education, Laborm and Pensions Committee Chair Judd Gregg (R-NH), predicts that its proposal fully enacted would extend coverage to an additional 17 million to 23 million currently uninsured people and give another five million easier access to a full range of care in their communities.

Not only would the complete proposal expand access to care to the large majority of those who currently lack it, but it would do so while saving money, the group concludes. For the full initiative, they project a five-year cost to the federal government of $93 billion, more than fully offset by five-year federal savings of $104 billion from streamlined regulation, less uncompensated-care strain for...

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