Why we need a convention to save healthcare

Because the medical treatments available to you shouldn't be determined by someone else's theology. They shouldn't be determined by lawyers, politicians or bureaucrats. They shouldn't be determined by your insurance company.

They should be determined by you and your doctor.

Because nurses give their all to do a tough job to help those who are most vulnerable, and they should be paid a decent salary.

Because it isn't right to sue someone for doing their best, even when their best turns out not to be good enough. Because money should stay in the healthcare system where it belongs instead of paying lawyers to argue about who is to blame. Because medical malpractice suits are destroying the medical profession.

Because you shouldn't need to have extensive training in medicine, law, and the insurance industry in order to make sense of hundreds of pages of policy declarations, just to be able to tell if your insurance coverage actually covers you.

Because we need to save the healthcare system and recruit the best and the brightest young people to become physicians and nurses.

Healthcare

Physicians undergo extensive training before they can practice. This always includes, at a minimum, 4 years of college, 4 years of medical school, a year of internship, and two years of residency. Most physicians actually train in residency for much longer, and all internship and residency programs have grueling work schedules. It is very common for interns and residents to work 100+ hours/week, in contrast with the commonly accepted notion of full time being 35-40 hours/week.

It makes sense, therefore, that medical decisions should be made by physicians, and that the universe of available medical treatments should be determined by the medical community.

Unfortunately, however, over the years various groups of people with no medical training at all have inserted themselves into the relationship between individuals and their doctors. Insurance companies have redefined on their own what medical treatments are necessary, so that they will not have to pay for quality healthcare. They have dictated to physicians the maximum reimbursable time that they can spend with patients, meaning that many patients are not getting the attention they need. State anti-drug laws have been wrongly applied to the doctor-patient relationship, even in the case of drugs that are medically useful. Politicians have enacted medical malpractice laws that have siphoned money into the legal profession by subjecting unavoidable human error to lawsuits. And some theologians still have an agenda to impose their views on patients' treatment options.

We propose:

Regulating insurance like a public utility. The public trust, expressed by the premium dollars paid by subscribers, is in many ways analagous to public airwaves and water supplies --- there's a finite amount of money the public can spend on insurance so we can't afford to waste it. Health insurance companies should have to meet broadly defined coverage requirements and defer to the medical community's determination of non-elective treatments. Paying for quality care, as measured by you and your physician, should be a prerequisite for doing business and therefore supercede profit motive.

Abolishing medical malpractice suits with the exception for gross negligence. Health and disability insurance should cover the costs of rare but inevitable medical errors, in the same way they cover other unintentional and proximately unavoidable misfortunes.

A constitutional amendment granting the right of self regulation to the medical profession. The state government would be prohibited from limiting the treatment options available to patients. The state would retain the right to license physicians to practice medicine.