We asked Asked 6 Healthcare Related Questions.
All 4 candidates were asked to provide a separate video for each answer. You will be able to leave your feedback on each answer. Your viewpoint will be shared with the candidates in a one-on-one interview. This interview will be published here on the website as well.
Prescription drugs and devices in the United States cost patients more than in any other country in the world. Research and development, patent protection, government regulations, and marketing costs all play a role. However, it is estimated that $200 billion per year in costs are directly related to Pharmacy Benefit Managers and Group Purchasing Organizations, which receive payments from hospitals and insurance companies in exchange for preferential, exclusive contracts that are illegal in other industries.
Please describe your position on PBMs/GPOs and either maintaining, modifying, or repealing the Medicare Anti-Kickback Safe Harbor Statute, which protects these payments.
The majority of the members of your audience tonight have ‘non-compete’ clauses in their professional contracts. These restrictive clauses prevent the Doctor from opening or joining a competing practice in the same geographic area for a set period of time. Half of those states that permit such clauses exempt physicians and other health care workers in order to protect the patients’ right to follow their Doctor and the Doctors’ ability to practice unencumbered — South Carolina has no such exemption.
Please state your position on legislation that would exempt Doctors nationally from non-compete clauses as a condition of employment.
As the country continues to cope with the COVID-19 crisis, the extent to which existing regulatory restrictions hinder states’ ability to respond is increasingly obvious. In South Carolina, through Executive Order, various provisions of the State Certification of Need and Health Facility Licensure Act (Certificate of Need law) were waived or suspended in order to add state healthcare capacity. Data from prior to the pandemic show that CON laws contribute to higher costs, worse racial health disparity, and fewer alternatives to care for patients and have been criticized by both Republican and Democrat federal administrations.
Please state your position on permanently and fully repealing the CON law in South Carolina.
Immunization exemption in South Carolina can be extended only for medical or religious reasons. However, with outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases in their school, unvaccinated children may be excluded from attending for their protection until deemed safe to do so.
If an effective COVID vaccine is developed, do you support (or not) students receiving mandatory vaccination for school, and what response do you feel should be taken should the student or guardians refuse it?
On the issue of price transparency in medicine, even some critics of President Trump are supportive of this administration’s efforts to push hospitals to publicly report more detailed cost information to the patients they serve. Greater price transparency reduces the prices charged and empowers patients with choices for common elective, non-emergent procedures.
Do you support efforts to provide patients with a reasonable expectation of the ‘out of pocket’ cost of a medical encounter in advance of its occurrence?
Do you support efforts to require hospitals and other medical providers to disclose their actual costs and the actual prices they charge insurance carriers and cash payers?
According to the Department of Labor Statistics, Americans typically adjust their household budgets for essential items under their control (entertainment, food, transportation, housing, and clothing) by +- 10% according to their needs/wishes/values while healthcare costs, which they can’t control, increased by 25% over the same period of time regardless of their choices.
Name 2 specific measures you would propose to address the continued increasing pressure on household budgets for health care expenditures that would give patients more control and choices
