Health Care Letter To Congressman Turner

The Honorable Michael Turner United States House of Representatives 1740 Longworth Building Washington, DC 20515

Sean ####### Address Removed

March 9, 2009

SUBJECT: Health Care Reform Dear Congressman Turner: I want to, first of all, thank you for your support for pro-life in the Congressional letter that was presented to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. For your efforts on this and many other issues, you continue to earn my support with praise as a voter in Ohio’s 3rd District. I am seeking to understand your thoughts regarding the current state of our health care system, and the direction that President Barack Obama has indicated he would like to take it. I am deeply concerned with the prospects of government run health care, but I also recognize that our current system has many flaws and there is building public support for reform of any measure. Are there any alternative proposals that possess any realistic chance for success against a government health care system proposed by the President? If not, I would like for you and your colleagues to consider the merit and feasibility of sponsoring a health care cooperative system. While there are a number of people in the United States that do not have health care because they truly cannot afford it, there also seems to be a growing percentage of the population that are becoming displeased with the lack of power people have in their health care choices. Many individuals have compared the costs of the current health care products with the risks of requiring expensive treatments as well as the risk that their insurance provider will seek ways to not cover these costs anyway. The latter of these risks has caused some to lose confidence in the monetary value of their health care coverage. The idea behind a health care cooperative system would be to return a balance of power to the individual purchaser of a health care plan. The system should not be employer based, but portable to the person or family. Cooperatives would be non-profit organizations with delegated leaders elected from the cooperative pool to represent the members in contract negotiations with insurance providers. Some amount of authority would be vested in delegated leaders or through membership vote to establish rules for contract negotiations, conditions permitting contracts to be re-competed, acquire legal services to represent members in complaints against the provider, and other services offered by the cooperative. However, there would also be a health care constitution created by Congress to describe how the cooperatives should be implemented and to define a health care bill of rights of the individuals. For example, the public at large may

Sean ####### March 9, 2009 Page 2

wish to recognize “pre-existing” conditions to certain specific medical diagnosis as transferable between cooperatives without penalty. Individuals should also have the right not to be limited to doctors in a provider preferred list. Cooperatives membership pools ought to be sized and distributed to statistically represent the health risks of a regional population and optimized for effective price negotiations. However, they should not grow to such a size that the number of providers that can underwrite such risk are limited thereby stifling competition. It is also possible for the United States government to play a role in collecting money from the many cooperatives to hedge providers against statistically non-representative health care pools reducing their risk and therefore cost when competing. A cooperative health care system can be developed as a non-partisan solution; health care should not be political. Let individuals have the power to participate and control their own coverage plan. Instead of one universal plan that conforms the entire Nation, many smaller cooperative groups can tailor their plans with the Nation witnessing which ideas turn out to work best. A cooperative has a better chance to evolve the health care system more rapidly to the benefit of the individual. There should be minimal burden on the government to maintain and support through taxes. Government can play a role, but should consciously restrain their influence to prevent stifling the creativity of the individual groups. The system can be tiered, offering an accepted fundamental core of health care with services aimed at and made affordable to many individuals who cannot afford health care services today. Higher tiers can be offered to provide access to services that are generally considered elective. Current unemployment benefits can be modified to promote continuous health care coverage during employment transition. In final thought, a health care cooperative should be, for the most part, transparent and understandable to the end user. A participant should not necessarily be concerned with the actual underwriting company since his or her coverage is defined by the cooperative. The cooperative would act as the intermediary between customer and provider in all aspects of payments and medical claims. Health care insurance costs should remain tax free, and employers should still have the opportunity to share coverage costs as a benefit to their employees. It is my hope that the debate on health care reform will spur creativity among our Congressional leaders to develop a system that is truly beneficial to the citizens of this great country. As we the people hope to advance with the health care policies developed by our leaders, it is in our best interest to aid our representatives in this creativity process. With sincere respect,

Sean #######