Today, I expanded on my commitment to fix Obamacare and
properly handle infectious diseases in the city.
As it relates to healthcare:
Increase community health centers and
hospitals by boosting
incentives and promoting Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) that will
increase access to high quality healthcare in NY7:
PPPs improve
service delivery by allowing the government to concentrate on
setting policy and serving the public while the private sector takes
responsibility for all other costly functions such as operating and maintaining
the buildings. They are more Cost-effective
by being able to manage costs more effectively than the public sector, PPPs
will result in lots of savings that can be used to fund other needed
services. They
increase investment in public infrastructure. With PPPs the private sector would
be investing their own funds in hospitals to serve our community. This
reduces the initial capital cost taken-on by the city and controls its overall
debt. They reduce public sector risk: This
transfers the financial risk of the construction to the private sector, which
is very willing, because they are more capable of managing buildings at a more
cost-effective way to get a better return of their investment. This will result
in a faster delivery of projects and higher levels of service for the people.
Reform Medicare: Give Seniors Better Choices.
Older Americans should
have access to coverage similar to the insurance plan Congress has
and Medicare should also receive all the funds needed to reach solvency.
Without major reforms to the program, there is
simply no way for the US to address the federal deficit, contain the national
debt, or save Medicare itself from collapse.
By 2030, when the last of the Baby Boomers retires,
there will be 77 million people on Medicare, up from 47 million today, and
there will also be 30% fewer working people funding the program benefits of
this much larger retiree population.
The primary cause for Medicare’s troubles is its
enormous increase in costs.
Healthcare inflation
has risen 48% last decade alone compared to the only 26% of the economy.
Providing a more expensive service to a rapidly
growing population and at the same time drawing on a fast-declining group of
taxpayers is a recipe for disaster. Therefore, it is impossible to fix this
problem only by increasing the taxes that fund Medicare.
Solutions:
a. Adjust the eligibility age for Medicare. Inducing more
middle-aged people to remain in the work force will decrease the ratio of number
of retirees per worker.
b. Restore the tax subsidies (eliminated by Obamacare)
that encourage employers to maintain private
health coverage for retirees. This would take some of the burden off of
Medicare.
c. Engage private insurers in a competitive bidding war for
equal health coverage of the elderly. Retirees who choose plans that cost less
than the average bid will retain three-fourths of the savings by having it
applied to any deductible.
d.
Address the problem of
Medicare fraud. It is estimated that 8% and 13% ($60 to $100 billion) of the
total spending of Medicare is fraudulent. Medicare processes over one billion
claims per year, and is required by law to reimburse claims within 15 to 30
days. This makes it almost impossible to prevent criminal activity.
Increase tax credits to small businesses:
Obamacare has
dramatically increased the costs of health insurance forcing small
businesses to reduce the amount of hours of their employees. Tax
incentives will help them mitigate this cost.
The Small Business Health Care Tax Credit helps small employers afford
the cost of providing health care coverage for their employees. Employers that
have fewer than 25 full-time employees, pay average annual wages below $50,000,
and contribute 50% or more of insurance premiums qualify for a credit of up to
50% to help offset the cost.
I believe that this incentive is still too low
to motivate a small business to increase its operating costs by adding health
insurance as a benefit to their employees.
This credit should reach 75% during the first three years and gradually
decrease to 50% throughout the next five.
EBOLA: Create a specialized First Response Unit
for Highly Infectious Diseases
We are lucky to live in a city that has 8
hospitals that have been designated as Ebola ready, none of which are in
District 7. However the most crucial
part of intervening with a possible Ebola case is right at the beginning,
during the first response. As
soon as a there is an indication of a possible exposure to this disease the
first team deployed should be a highly specialized one.
Even though our First
Responders in NYC are all very well trained to handle this situation and have all
the equipment necessary to keep them safe, a highly specialized group of
responders with new and more specialized equipment could immediately eliminate
any risk of any further cross-contamination.
This team should be equipped with a portable isolation pod that can be
quickly transported to the site where the patient can be immediately enclosed
in the pod to avoid any other human contact and any further contamination of
the premises. The patient will remain in the pod during the transfer to the
nearest Ebola safe facility. The more isolated we keep the patient the higher
the probabilities of success in eliminating any threat.
We know that Ebola may not
be the only highly infectious disease which we will have to deal with in the
future, so creating a highly specialized team to immediately isolate and
transfer these patients will virtually eliminate any possible threat to our
community.
Twitter: @JLFNY7
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JLFernandezForCongress
