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Jim Oberweis on Health Care |
"The magic words are repeal and replace," Oberweis said. "Democrats may not like repeal and Republicans may not like replace, but something's got to be done to drive down the cost of health insurance."
Truax said the Affordable Care Act isn't making health care affordable. Both attacked incumbent U.S. Sen. Dick Durbim, a Springfield Democrat, for supporting the health care law, and both believe that support will be the longtime legislator's biggest obstacle to being re-elected. "This ObamaCare disaster is a huge weight on Democrats across the country," Oberweis said.
"It's so fundamentally flawed it probably can't be fixed as is," he said. Oberweis said allowing children to remain on their parent's health policy until age 26, provide coverage for pre-existing conditions and more comparison shopping for coverage across state lines should be allowed.
We could create--at the state level--statewide health insurance exchanges, through which the self-employed, and those who work for small businesses which don't provide coverage, could purchase their own lower-cost policies. These policies would be personal and portable, and would be tax-advantaged.
No discussion of health care reform would be complete without taking a look at the need to reform our medical malpractice system. Too many places have made it unaffordable for doctors to stay and maintain a practice. They simply cannot afford the medical malpractice insurance necessary to operate a medical practice. Reforming this system must be a top priority of any health care reform effort.
Oberweis: I think I'm as worried as anyone else on the direction of the country. I think we've got a long way to go. Part of the reason we started investing in China and investing internationally is that we're--this was six years ago--we were worried about the direction the U.S. was going. That said, you don't have to invest in "America," per se. We can invest in HMS Systems down the street that audits Medicare and Medicaid plans for insurance billing and fraud. Am I a big fan of nationalized healthcare, even healthcare reform? No. Is it going to help HMS's business? Absolutely. It'll be terrific. So I think you have to be a niche player. You've got to find smaller ideas that are going to benefit in the conditions as they are. You can change the conditions and always try to find ways to make money in the conditions as they exist.