Allow small businesses to pool resources to purchase health insurance for employees

• 88 pages – Sen. Enzi – Small Business Health Plans Act (S. 2818)
• Will give small business owners, by joining together through their associations, the kind of clout in the marketplace needed to negotiate high-value and high-quality health insurance for their members on a regional or even national basis.
• CBO has indicated that under this legislation:
  • Nearly 750,000 more people would have private health insurance under this bill than under current law;
  • Three out of every four small business employees would pay lower health insurance premiums under this bill than they do under current law; and
  • Federal and state Medicaid spending would decline by nearly $1.4 billion over 10 years.

Purchasing health insurance across state lines to increase competition

• 30 pages – Sen. DeMint – Health Care Choices Act(S.1459)
• Creates a national market for health insurance by allowing individuals to purchase health plans in any state – as they can with car insurance today.
  • Allows consumers to shop for health insurance the same way they do for other insurance products – online, by mail, over the phone, or in consultation with an insurance agent in their hometown.
  • Empowers consumers by giving them the ability to purchase an affordable health insurance policy with a range of options.
  • Eliminates restrictions on consumers currently limited to picking only those policies that meet their state’s regulations and mandated benefits. Instead, they can examine the wide array of insurance policies qualified in one state and offered for sale in multiple states.
  • Allows consumers to choose a plan that best meets their health care needs by examining both the cost of the policy and the benefits provided by the insurer – a process that is currently dictated by state insurance mandates.

Reduce junk lawsuits against doctors

• 28 pages – Sen. Ensign – Medical Care Access Protection (MCAP) Act (S. 45)
• Comprehensive medical liability reform measure that sets reasonable limits on noneconomic damages, while also providing for unlimited economic damages.
  • The bill uses the Texas stacked cap model for non-economic damages, meaning non-economic damages can total up to $750,000.
  • Since 2003, physicians in Texas have saved a collective $574 million on their liability premiums.

• CBO has indicated that the MCAP bill would reduce federal budget deficits by roughly $54 billion over the next 10 years.

• CBO analyzed a similar medical liability reform proposal and concluded it would reduce total national health care spending by about 0.5 percent (about $11 billion in 2009).

Create state-based health care exchanges to for the purchase of private health insurance

• 8 pages – Sens. Coburn and Burr – Patients Choice Act (S. 1099) Title II
• Creates State Health Insurance Exchanges to give Americans a one-stop marketplace to compare different health insurance policies and select the one that meets their unique needs.
  • These will facilitate real competition between private plans and give Americans – for the first time – a choice of health care plans.
  • Combines the benefits of choice that are theoretically available on the individual market with the bargaining power and scale that’s generally accessible only in large employers
  • Will provide access to a wide array of competing providers offering different plans with varying benefit levels, emphases and price tags.

Combat waste fraud and abuse

• 21 pages – Sen. LeMieux – Prevent Health Care Fraud Act (S. 2128)
• Creates a Deputy Secretary for Health Care Fraud Prevention within HHS; adopts similar technology used to identify credit card fraud; and requires background checks for all federal healthcare providers and suppliers.
  • Will do more to prevent health care fraud losses estimated to range from a $60 billion to $226 billion per year.
  • The GAO estimated that 1 out of every 7 dollars in Medicare claims is lost to fraud, and 1 out of every 10 dollars for Medicaid.