Looking for a few good health care ideas

The Senate’s health care reform bill is dead. So it goes. What next?

Will Democrats attempt to pick off Olympia Snowe to restore their Senate supermajority? Unlikely, with moderate Dems uneasy and both liberals and moderates in the House spoiling for a fight.

Will they go the “reconciliation route” and push through a scaled-down version of the bill by simple majority (operating on the reasonable presumption that such things can always be expanded in the future)? This would be the face-saving move.

Or will President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid “start over,” slow down, and work to create a less-ambitious bill, this time enlisting Republican input in a truly bipartisan effort?

Only time will tell. But here’s my question:

What should a good health-care reform bill contain? For despite the histrionics of some, surely the Senate bill was not the last, best chance at securing health care for the poor and disadvantaged as per Catholic Social Teaching in secula seculorum amen. 

I’m nowhere close to an expert or even a particularly knowledgeable layman, though I have a few general ideas. We all want to reduce costs and inefficiency; we want coverage for the poor; we want to maintain legitimate freedoms and not bloat government entitlements; and we want to leave out public funding for abortion and any other morally objectionable practice that some might label “health care.”

This is what all Catholics of good will want, I think. How do we get it?

My health care wish list would start with tort reform. Outrageous malpractice awards raise the cost of health care for everyone while enriching only the lawyers. Let’s cap them; and let’s make other prudent reforms to the system to discourage the kinds of frivilous lawsuits that not only raise costs, but affect the diagnoses and treatment decisions that doctors make.

Instead of forcing insurers to accept patients with pre-existing conditions, by which the state would attempt to suspend by coercive fiat the actuarial calculations by which insurance companies naturally operate (and which, as Ramesh Ponnuru points out, requires a host of other onerous regulations in order to be feasible), why not create something like a national high-risk pool?

Similarly, instead of massive new state intrusions into the healthcare system or personal liberty, why not simply reform Medicaid, to provide more of the uninsured poor with some kind of modest major medical coverage? High deductibles are a way of life even for the surburban middle class. If routine medical costs could be brought down through other reforms, it would be less burdensome to pay cash for checkups and flu visits, and the coverage would be there for operations and other pricey procedures — the kind that can wreck the finances of the uninsured poor.

Okay, so I’m just throwing it out there. But I want to hear from the many others who know more than I. What would your perfect health-care reform bill look like, and why? Please answer in complete sentences, and show your work.