Medicare (Headed for Insolvency by 2024)
Medicare must be saved and protected! The best way to do that is to maintain 100% coverage for the poor and very sick, while providing means-adjusted premium support payments to seniors of moderate means. Equipping millions of new price conscious consumers with the resources they need to enter robust interstate health insurance markets will dramatically increase choice and competition in the health care and health insurance industries. Every senior will have access to quality health care, and it will also cost substantially less.
Medicaid (Skyrocketing Costs)
Block grant federal monies to the states and provide federal tax credits for purchasing private long-term care insurance. Replacing unlimited federal matching funds with a block grant provides state officials more incentive to innovate, remove inefficiencies, and weed out fraud, while also making them more accountable to their electorate for the quality of their Medicaid program.
In Maryland, for example, the Federal Government matches whatever the state spends on Medicaid. And last year, Maryland's refusal to reconcile applicants' social security numbers with federal records led to about $2.5 million in benefits going to dead people as well as broad Medicaid access being granted to illegal aliens. Block grants would double Marylanders' incentive to end egregiously irresponsible practices such as this.
Access to Quality, Affordable Health Care
We must expand competition by using the Affordable Care Act's regional Health Insurance Exchanges to broker the sale of private health insurance across state lines and create interstate provider networks that sell primary care on a "per-person" basis instead of "fee-for-service." We must also increase the stake that price conscious consumers have in their purchase decisions with percentage-based co-pays, tax deductible personal policies, portability between jobs, and high-deductible "catastrophic" policies that are coupled with tax-free Health Savings Accounts. States or regions must establish subsidized high-risk pools that cover pre-existing conditions; and we must expand Texas-style tort reforms, i.e. plaintiff pays all costs if frivolous.
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA or ACA)
I, along with 80% of America, oppose this legislation. That said, some of it makes sense. When I get to Washington, I will write the Replace legislation that will be coupled to the ACA's Repeal legislation. In the meantime, implementation should be suspended for one year. Please review the Op-Ed I submitted to the Baltimore Sun detailing what parts can be kept, what must be discarded, and what should be added.
Social Security Disability Insurance (Faces insolvency in 2018)
In order to sustain Supplementary Security Income (SSI) insurance program we must fully fund Continuing Disability Reviews to monitor each recipient's capabilities and determine where skills re-training might help them return to the workforce.