Word: reformator
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...individual mandate requiring everyone who doesn't get health coverage at work to go out and buy it, just as car owners have to carry automobile insurance. But that means the Federal Government would have to subsidize people who couldn't afford it themselves, upping the health-care-reform price tag considerably. Obama says he can support an individual mandate only if it has a "hardship waiver to exempt Americans who cannot afford it," and he also says small businesses face a "number of special challenges in affording health benefits and should be exempted...
...Without one mandate or the other, or a combination of the two, it will be impossible to get truly universal coverage. Some people - maybe a lot of them - are going to fall through the cracks. More pessimistic veterans of previous battles over health-care reform predict privately that even if a bill passes this year, more than half the nation's uninsured could remain that...
...covered? For universal coverage to have any meaning, there will have to be a minimum set of guaranteed services. But what does that mean? Does it include preventive care? How about mental-health care? Abortion services? These are the kinds of decisions that will determine how expensive health-care reform will be for consumers, business and government. And what goes into the basic benefits package is a political minefield - which is why many health-care experts say they don't want it left in the hands of Congress and lobbyists. "If you start fighting over whether chiropractors should...
...spent on medical treatment that is unnecessary, ineffective, duplicative or even harmful. Changing all that is going to require revamping health care from top to bottom, starting with the way health-care providers are reimbursed. While the current system pays them for the amount of care they provide, real reform would put more emphasis on the quality of that care and the outcomes it achieves...
...this country really afford to reform health care? What everyone seems to have concluded in the past five years is that we can't afford not to. When Washington punts on health care, it only becomes more difficult to fix the system the next time it tries. "The reason why we're going to pass it," Baucus says, "is we're not going to have this opportunity again...