While healthcare delivery in Idaho continues to improve, healthcare and healthcare insurance continues to rise. Moreover, Idaho’s health exchange is under stress and Medicaid’s costs continue to increase. We need more choice, lower prices, more transparency, and less federal government intrusion in both healthcare and healthcare insurance. Choice is not forcing every insurance policy to fit rigid Obamacare mandates. Choice means letting people buy what they need for themselves and their families. It is helped by letting people take advantage of things like robust Health Savings Accounts and other products and services. Lower prices come from unleashing competition by medical providers and insurance companies. This includes charity care, direct primary care, health club memberships, access to clinics that reduce traffic in hospital emergency rooms, and removing Obamacare’s Essential Health Benefits mandates. This also includes, medi-share, expanded disease management, and wellness programs that utilize technology. Cost reductions will come by implementing these patient-centric alternatives, by removal of unnecessary federal and state regulations, and by putting more of the expenditures under the direct control of the patient.

Idaho should have a healthcare system where choice, transparency, competition, and fewer government mandates will empower individuals with less costs and greater access to high-quality healthcare and insurance. We don’t need government-controlled Obamacare or a health exchange. We need a “parallel path” based more on market and private charitable alternatives and less on government controls.