The People's Health Care Reform Plan

I just received an article by Dr. Bradley Hennenfent: The People's Health care Reform Plan.

The Plan starts off like this:

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Let's be part of the Health Care Reform solution. Let's distribute a plan that empowers patients, doctors, and nurses, which everyone can understand. The People's Health Care Reform Plan will make PATIENTS MORE POWERFUL, and the Government, corporations, and insurance companies (crony capitalism) less powerful. This plan will reduce costs, increase access, and save the most lives. It's also simple.

SHORT VERSION OF THE PEOPLE'S HEALTH CARE REFORM PLAN

1. Tell us patients what everything costs - no more secrets.
2. Give doctors, nurses, and allied health care professionals social networking so they can tell us everything they know.
3. Tort Reform.
4. Distribute The People's Health Care Reform Plan to everyone in America and around the World via Facebook, E-mail, etc.

PATIENTS GETTING CONTROL OF PRICES

Congress must facilitate that patients be told the price of everything in health care in advance, except in true emergencies, or they do not have to pay.

Patients cannot spend money from Medicare, Medicaid, Insurance Companies, Unions, or their own money, wisely if they do not know what anything costs. It's these hidden prices that cause monopolies that drive up our prices and result in unsavory backroom political deals. It's not knowing the price of anything that enables Medicare, Medicaid, and corporate fraud to occur so easily. How can we know if we are overcharged if we never know what anything costs in the first place? How can we revolutionize health care if we don't know what costs too much? We need to know the prices.

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The plan goes on to include aspects of getting more information to patients via technology and clinician input; tort reform; putting more power with patients and direct care providers; and finally a plan to get the plan out.

You can read the entire plan at Dr. Hennenfent's FaceBook.

It is easy to support pricing transparency and some of the other concepts in the plan. Healthcare Blue Book provides nice technology that helps patients with comparison pricing.

So what do you think about the Dr. Hennenfent's plan?

The bigger question to me, is why is it left to individuals to promote common sense solutions that would actually help reform the health system?