Personal Option for Health Care
Our healthcare system is confusing, expensive, and driven by large systems that make the individual feel helpless. Expanding the role of government over the past decade did little to fix these concerning trends. In fact, health care is getting more bureaucratic and more expensive.
Across our nation, out of pocket health care spending continues to grow, averaging $1,315 per capita in 2020 and projected to reach $1,535 per capita by 2025.
In Pennsylvania, per capita health care spending in 2021 was $11,603, higher than the national average of $10,191. And costs are rising. Average per capita health care spending grew nearly 27% since 2014 (the first year of full implementation of the Affordable Care Act).
We can make health care affordable and accessible by allowing patients to customize their health care. Instead of a public option, we need a personal option. When we give Pennsylvanians more control over their health care choices, they get the affordability they need, the quality they deserve and the doctors they trust.
What a personal option would do
- 1.Keep and expand the health care delivery and insurance options that work.
- 2. Remove bureaucratic rules that limit access to primary care and advanced providers.
- 3. Empower patients to shop and save by enforcing hospital price transparency rules.
- 4. Make health care more convenient and flexible by expanding telemedicine.
- 5. Improve health care access in Medicaid by focusing on eligible patients.
Personal Option Polling
Learn more about how the personal option can lower health care costs here.
Everyone, regardless of income, deserves the ability to personalize their health care.
Personal Option Media Coverage
- “A Physician’s Misfortune Highlights What’s Wrong with Health Care.” RealClear Health. 4/12/24
- “As a Pennsylvania-based pediatrician, Mass has witnessed the downward spiral of our healthcare system for decades. … [S]he advocates for transparency so patients can follow the money. She also recommends loosening restrictions that inundate physicians with nonessential paperwork, distracting them from providing more personalized care.” Read more…
- “Getting Insurance is Simple. Getting Care is Not.” RealClear Health. 12/15/23
- “Rather than continue down the path of public options (e.g., Medicare for All), we can strengthen the personal option—an abundant marketplace of affordable services that benefits patients and practitioners, not bureaucracy—through simple, commonsense reforms.” Read more…
- “Report: Comparison shopping cuts healthcare costs.” The Center Square. 11/13/2023
- The foundation, which advocates for fiscally conservative policies, said health care across Pennsylvania is ‘inaccessible, confusing and unaffordable.’ Enforcing existing pricing transparency rules for hospitals, giving more practicing authority to nurse practitioners and pharmacists, and making it easier for smaller groups of workers to pool insurance plans could help, Stelle said, not ‘Medicare for all.’” Read more…
- “Give NPs more time with patients.” The Tribune-Democrat. 6/14/23
- “I am a nurse practitioner (NP) serving Erie and Elk counties. And for Pennsylvania NPs like me, the commonwealth’s antiquated laws reduce quality time with patients, increase stress and waste thousands of dollars. … Granting NPs full practice authority would empower me to run my business how I’d like.” Read more…
- “Cutting red tape on Pa.’s nurse practitioners.” TribLIVE. 6/12/23
- This government red tape, at best, discourages NPs from moving to the commonwealth and, at worst, decreases access to primary care. … About 14% of Pennsylvania’s population lives in a medically underserved area, and nearly every county in the state suffers from an insufficient supply of primary care providers. So, more NPs coming to Pennsylvania would be welcome news to many of these communities.” Read more…
- “Pa Nurse Practitioners Advocate for Full Practice Authority.” Erie News Now. 5/11/2023
- “In Pennsylvania, nurse practitioners have been pushing for “full practice authority” for many years. Currently, nurse practitioners are required to practice under a collaboration agreement with a physician at all times. Nurses say one of the best ways to explain it is like being stuck with a permanent student driver’s permit.” Read more…
- “Nurse practitioners seek independence in other states.” The Center Square. 5/3/2023
- “Pennsylvania’s neighbors have been able to expand health care access in rural areas by allowing nurse practitioners to work independently. If the state follows Maryland’s lead, a Commonwealth Foundation study argued, nurse practitioner numbers would increase by 30%, eliminating half of the areas facing the health care. … Advocates from the Pennsylvania Coalition of Nurse Practitioners argued that the change would update the commonwealth’s health system.” Read more…
- “In Pa., nurse practitioners must work under doctors. But is it what patients want?” Penn Live. 3/20/2023
- “In comparing Pennsylvania and Maryland, which gave nurse practitioners full independence several years ago, it found Maryland has more nurse practitioners per capita, giving its residents better access to primary care, especially in areas with shortages of primary care because of economic or geographic reasons.” Read more…
- “Nursing shortage can be fixed by speeding up the licensing process.” The Philadelphia Inquirer. 5/30/22
- “Pennsylvania is currently enduring one of the worst nurse shortages in the nation. A shocking one in four nursing positions went unfilled last year — a trend experts predict will worsen, with an estimated shortfall of 20,000 nurses by 2026. … Nurses seeking Pennsylvania licenses — whether moving from out of state or recently graduating — face long processing times and delays. … Government rules are discouraging nurses and reducing access to health care.” Read more…