nment. The plan would fully cover everyone via a comprehensive public insurance pool, paid for by taxes from individuals and businesses. The plan has provisions to limit over-treatment and insufficient care, designed to both protect patient interests as well as contain costs. Costs would also be controlled by cutting the current administrative overload and through health care planning. The plan would not result in an increase in total health expenditures. The people who are now uninsured will be insured with funds deriving from massive savings that will occur from the elimination of the inherent waste in the current system. With more than 1500 insurance companies and virtually countless payment plans and policies, our administrative costs have exploded. A single payer system has a much more basic payment scheme. Doctors would spend less time on paperwork, and potentially more time with patients. Clinics and hospitals would need fewer staff members, and would require less costly, redundant equipment. The details of the Republican plan are as followed. All essential care would be incorporated into the plan, including: mental health, acute care, ambulatory care, long term care and home health care, prescription drugs and medical supplies, rehabilitation services, occupational therapy, and preventive medicine. Exclusions would be made for unnecessary and ineffective procedures. These exclusions would be determined by expert panels, most probably made of doctors, nurses, other health care workers, and health planners. Everyone in the U.S. would receive a national health care plan card, with necessary identification encoded on it. The card can then be used to gain access to any fee-for-service practitioner, hospital or clinic. HMO members can receive non-emergency care through the HMO. As mentioned before, to implement the national health program, health care costs do not need to increase. It would however produce a major shift in payment tow...
