A Florida congresswoman is touting the benefits of a prescription for health care reform, addressing what she calls “the sensitive issue of private insurance retention.”

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) is calling for reinsurance with expense caps for private insurers, eliminating all “existing condition” exclusions and extending COBRA coverage timeframes.

Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement that the federal government should provide federal and state guidelines for private insurance instead of a single-payer federal system or a single-payer system implemented at the state level. In working with private insurance, she said costs will be dramatically reduced, a safety net will exist for all eligible U.S. citizens and the “democratic and capitalist-oriented independent health care system” will remain intact.

She and a Democratic constituent in her Florida district, Philip Leitman, president of NTM Info and Research, sent a personal letter to every member of the Senate detailing their plan.

“We’ve identified what we believe are the key components of health care reform,” said Leitman, who wrote the prescription for Ros-Lehtinen.

The plan also would provide all childhood and adult vaccines at greatly reduced costs and basic health care to all citizens, while at the same time revising standard cost structures and implementing price range guidelines for services in order to reduce cost disparities between providers.

Ros-Lehtinen’s plan would require all services that can be provided at home such as intravenous (IV) infusion, to be done at home to reduce costs and the patient’s risk of infection. She also wants to allow Medicare to pay doctors a flat fee.