Mike Huckabee on Health Care

Short term savings in health care, Huckabee argues, can be achieved by making health care less expensive by enacting medical liability reform, shifting to electronic medical records, making health insurance policies more portable, and helping people open health savings accounts. He sees the states as laboratories for new-market based approaches to fixing the health care system. Huckabee supports moving away from the current employer based model, but not towards a government run system.

Universal health care

He opposes universal health care mandated by federal edict. Huckabee believes we should further privatize health care rather than additional government programs or mandates. He vows policies to encourage the private sector to seek innovative ways to reduce costs and likes states’ role as laboratories for new market-based approaches.

Prevention

Preventive health care needs to be prioritized. Huckabee believes our health care system is irrevocably broken, partly because it is only a “health care” system, not a “health” system.

Nutrition

“If it comes through a car window, it’s not food. And if it wasn’t food 100 years ago, it’s not food, it’s a product.”

Directly from the candidate:

The health care system in this country is irrevocably broken, in part because it is only a “health care” system, not a “health” system. We don’t need universal health care mandated by federal edict or funded through ever-higher taxes. We do need to get serious about preventive health care instead of chasing more and more dollars to treat chronic disease, which currently gobbles up 80% of our health care costs, and yet is often avoidable. The result is that we’ll be able to deliver better care where and when it’s needed.

I advocate policies that will encourage the private sector to seek innovative ways to bring down costs and improve the free market for health care services. We have to change a system that happily pays $30,000 for a diabetic to have his foot amputated, but won’t pay for the shoes that would save his foot.

We can make health care more affordable by reforming medical liability; adopting electronic record keeping; making health insurance more portable from one job to another; expanding health savings accounts to everyone, not just those with high deductibles; and making health insurance tax deductible for individuals and families as it now is for businesses. Low income families would get tax credits instead of deductions. We don’t need all the government controls that would inevitably come with universal health care. When I’m President, Americans will have more control of their health care options, not less.