Tort reform, to reduce doctor's malpractice insurance and the practice of overdone preventive testing to ward off lawsuits.
Almost every halfway independent study of this suggestion pegs such savings in the low to mid single digits of %.
Promote Health Savings Accounts
Works wonderfully...for those people who actually have enough money to be able to put some of it away in a place that's untouchable for anything but health care. For those people who have to make decisions about fixing their car or taking their medicine, or buying clothes for their family when the season changes or kids grow up, HCA's are of little use, because they do not have the flexibility in their income to be able to (in reality) lose that money to other expenses.
Streamline the regulatory environments so that insurance can be bought across state lines.
This is perhaps the dumbest idea I've heard in the entire debate recently. Please point out to me a single industry or market where regulations were relaxed, markets were opened further to small groups of monopolistic companies, and the result is that the product got better? The HI industry is already ruled by 5-6 companies who oversee something like 90% of the entire insurance spending in this country, all D.B.A. various licensees of the BC/BS name or some such front. Removing interstate restrictions will do two things. First, all those subsidiaries may collapse back on WellPoint/Aetna, HCA, and such, so that we will see that it's just those 5-6 companies. Second, it will set up a race to the bottom, focused on the states with the least protective and cheapest coverage.
Prime example? Delaware, with it's structure in place to the benefit of credit card companies. Just about every major credit company now resides in DE, because Delaware has made it nearly impossible for people to declare bankrupcy against companies.
There are already protections for pre-existing conditions
Only when applied to group policy coverage. There are no such provisions if you were to have gone and bought individual insurance coverage on the public market.