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AJC.com > Legislature > Blog > Archives > 2007 > January > 23 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USSenator: Competition needed in health care
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
State Sen. Judson Hill (R-Marietta) said Tuesday that people should be able to buy pills the same way they purchase airline tickets “on Travelocity” or shop online for the cheapest hotels. He said the current health care system should be scrapped.
In a news conference, he said his massive, 60-page health care proposal, Senate Bill 28, would set up an apparatus that would allow Georgians to shop easily for the most competitively priced medications and policies.
“Our current system is price blind, quality silent, and many incentives are in the wrong place,” he said. “Georgians at all levels deserve to have health care and a health care system that works.”
He said his proposal is based on free market competition and that Georgians need “monetary incentives to reward people for making wise choices.”
“Real change doesn’t come with minor tweaks,” he said, but with “major transformation.”
He said he envisions a system that “when you go to your physicians and they prescribe a drug … they type in my ZIP code and the name of the drug and up pops a couple of choices.” He compared the process to passing by one gasoline station to save three cents per gallon at another.
“Today, the purchase of health care is complex, and it’s confusing, and it’s absurd,” he said. “Everybody wins when you have more competition.”
Linda Lowe, a consumer health advocate who lives in Atlanta, said she was concerned that Hill’s bill, which even sponsors say has little if any chance of passage in its present form, wouldn’t “make a dent” in the number of uninsured Georgians, now 1.7 million. Rather, she said it likely would increase the number of people who are underinsured.
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