Take Two Aspirin and Call Me in the Up-and-Up

This "debate" about healthcare coverage gives me a headache.

Everyone on TV is talking in vagueries, in generalities, in meandering non sequiturs. People should talk about what they themselves want -- in straightforward, plain English.

I'd like to be able to buy my own insurance policy on the open market -- a policy that offers me roughly the same level of coverage that I get from my group plan at work, and for about the same price. Let's say my employer takes $200 out of my paycheck each month to pay my premiums for the group plan. I'd like to keep that $200 myself and use it to buy my own open-market plan, one that would travel with me as I move from job to job (voluntarily or involuntarily), so that I wouldn't have to turn down good jobs with minimal or no coverage and I wouldn't have to sign up for the expensive COBRA program if I'm laid off. Most important, I wouldn't have to worry about being denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition.

By their nature, of course, group plans are less expensive than individual plans. But I'd be willing to pay more by a third or even a half if it meant I would never again have to worry about losing coverage after a job loss or major illness. I also wouldn't have to worry about the no-benefits "enrollment period" most employers require after I get a new job.

What do you want from healthcare itself? I want hospitals, clinics, and physicians' offices to use Internet technologies -- like basic e-mail -- to administer patient records, including tests and procedure reports. It's a scandal -- it's pure idiocy -- that we patients have to contend with illegible photocopies of hard-copy documents which have to be hand-carried back to our GP or on to our next specialist. Why can't those hard copies be scanned and then attached to an e-mail to both the patient and his other doctors? This takes mere seconds. The amount of photocopying, snail-mailing, and hand-carrying that's required in this day and age is ridiculous. Physicians and clinics pay their front-office help to prepare all that -- which takes ten times as long and is ten times as prone to error as it would take to scan and attach electronically.

I also want competition. I want two, three, or four endoscopy centers (where an assembly line of patients is processed) to vie for my business when I need an endoscopy. I want to be able to call each of them to ask for the fee. Let physicians, outpatient clinics, and hospitals compete in pricing for my business. That's the only fair and reliable way to handle what is, after all, a business transaction.