Today's Op-Eds: What the GOP can do with 'Obamacare' and more about the doctor shortage

The GOP Can Outsmart ObamaCare The Wall Street Journal
Happily, a path back to the future exists that just might be politically actionable in a divided Washington. It involves not repealing ObamaCare but adding something to it — an optional federal charter for health insurers. Under this charter, let's permit insurers to design their policies free of ObamaCare's mandated benefit levels and free of state regulation. Let's let these policies be purchasable with pre-tax dollars and allow them to satisfy ObamaCare's mandate requiring individuals to have insurance and employers to provide it (11/3).

Too Few Doctors The Houston Chronicle
A recent TMA/medical schools survey showed that 38 percent of Texas graduates who completed residencies outside the state would have preferred to do that training in Texas if there had been slots in their specialty. It just shouldn't be that difficult in Texas — home to so many medical firsts and bests and so many private-sector successes — to hang onto the doctors we spend so much to train (11/3).

Putting Our Health First The Huffington Post
In California, the [Accountable Care Act] train has left the station and is on track to meet the 2014 goal of full implementation. Whether or not you supported the law, it's up to all of us to make it work on behalf of our health, of our family's health, and of the health of our state economy. This is a historic moment for our nation, one that holds much promise for many who have been locked out for so long — and for everyone who has been subsidizing the uninsured through higher health care costs (Robert Ross, 11/3).

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This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.