Covering the uninsured through compromise?
kaisernetwork.org
HealthCast
Cover the Uninsured Week National Launch Event Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and other organizations
4/27/2005
Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D., MBA, president and CEO, Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation:
Our country desperately needs less partisanship and more compromise for its coming to real solutions on this important issue… We wish that more leaders would follow the example of Senators Wyden and Hatch and put aside their preconceived notions about what healthcare reform should look like and come together in the spirit of compromise rising above the partisanship and making compromise the first choice, not the last resort.
There is no responsible reason not to take action. The mechanisms for securing coverage have been worked out. Millions have been spent on policy studies with the physical implication clearly worked out, forecast by some of our own research by the Institute of Medicine. The tools are on the table.
http://www.kaisernetwork.org/health_cast/hcast_index.cfm?display=detail&hc=1421
Transcript:
http://www.kaisernetwork.org/health_cast/uploaded_files/042705_covertheunisured05_transcript.pdf
And…
Critical condition - 6.6 million uninsured in nation’s largest state By Risa Lavizzo-Mourey
San Francisco Chronicle
May 1, 2005
Many of us have our fix, the choice we prefer over all others: tax credits, public programs, business mandates, individual mandates, association health plans, a combination of some or all of these options, or a completely public program like Canada’s.
But every time we get serious about changing the status quo, too many of us stick to our own fix and refuse to budge. The only consensus we reach is that the status quo — the mess we are in — is the least objectionable choice to the most people.
This may sound idealistic, even naive, but something has to give. The mess must be solved. Health care is not a policy, product or political gotcha — it is something everyone needs.
There is no responsible reason for not acting. The main thing we are missing is leadership.
Accepting the status quo isn’t an alternative. The number of uninsured Americans is too large. The number of people at risk of losing their coverage is too great. The consequences of inaction for everyone are too serious.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/05/01/INGCGCFQK81.DTL
Comment: Compromise? Compromise what with what?
Do we cover everyone with health insurance? If not, who do we leave out?
Do we cover all beneficial services? If not, what do we leave out?
Do we make care affordable for everyone? If not, which people will be denied access to what services because of the lack of affordability?
Do we reduce the waste of profound administrative excesses? If not, what administrative excesses should we continue to use in spite of lack of value?
Do we institute measures to control some of the excessive prices in health care? If not, what goods and services are worthy of pricing in excess of their value?
Do we establish policies to end funding of expensive technological excesses that have been demonstrated to have no benefit or even produce worse outcomes? If not, which detrimental services should be funded?
Do we improve quality and reduce costs by strengthening our deficient primary care infrastructure? If not, which specialists in our fragmented system should we put in charge of coordinating integrated preventive and chronic care services?
The call for compromise is a call to work with all of the tools on the table, placing various patches on our fragmented system of health care. But there is a problem. How do we use that one other tool left on the table once most of the interests have used their favorite fix to cobble together a profoundly expensive and highly deficient health care system?
And what is that other tool? A single, efficient, effective, affordable, universal, comprehensive, national health insurance program. But, of course, that tool has to be discarded because it won’t work. It doesn’t allow for compromise.