Dr. Pryce, who practices in Kent, Ohio, was on the board of the Summit County Republican party for 22 years but stepped down because “everything was controlled by a few people,” he says. “Everything was scripted.” He now has connections with the Tea Party movement and has appeared several times on Fox News.
Dr. Pryce dismisses accusations that he will split the conservative vote. “I am not looking to be a spoiler,” he says. “I’m looking to win.”
A central feature of his campaign is healthcare, which he says he approaches from “the prospective of a healthcare professional and not a politician.” If elected, he would work to replace the new reform law with his own ideal healthcare system, described in his 2009 book, “ANATHEMA America’s War On Medicine,” from Trafford Publishing. He plans to add three chapters critiquing the healthcare reform law.
Here are five key features of Dr. Pryce’s ideal healthcare system:
Reduce malpractice claims. The medical profession would create written standards of care for each diagnosis, functioning as a safe harbor from malpractice lawsuits. When a patient is injured, physicians and other providers who kept within these standards could not be sued. The medical profession would update standards yearly, based on the latest medical evidence.
Create adverse outcomes insurance. Patients who have adverse outcomes not attributable to medical malpractice would be recompensed from a special fund that everyone would pay into. Payments would amount to only a few dollars a year and as quality of care improves through use of evidence-based medicine, fewer payments would be needed and the surplus could be used to help cover the uninsured.
Disband Medicare and Medicaid. Dr. Pryce would replace Medicare and Medicaid with a program paying reasonable reimbursements and financed by taxes and the adverse outcomes fund. The program would be run by a private company or by a quasi-public organization set up like the Federal Reserve Board.
Get rid of small insurance entities. Large insurers are split up into thousands of small insurance entities, each with its own administrative functions, which is very wasteful. This would be replaced by a streamlined nationwide system made up of just three insurers. Companies would bid for nationwide contracts, forcing them to keep premiums in line.
Establish uniform EMR systems. Right now there are a myriad of electronic medical record programs that cannot interact with each other. A universal EMR would eliminate repetition of services, such as new diagnostic tests, creating big savings for the healthcare system.
Politically, Ohio is a bellwether state and Dr. Pryce wants to tap into its large bloc of independent voters. While 22 percent of Ohio voters are Democratic and 15 percent are Republican, 63 percent are independent. “The independents tend to lean toward the right,” he says.
View the campaign website for Dr. Michael Pryce.
Contact Dr. Pryce at mm533@yahoo.com.
