By Steve Burd
The Washington Times
May 7, 2007
Today, a large group of employers and business leaders are joining to form the Coalition to Advance Healthcare Reform.
We agree that any lasting solution must be based on five core principles.
First… market forces… consumer orientation and transparency…
Second… every American should be required to carry health insurance…
Third… assistance for low-income individuals…
Fourth… health-care plans must be designed to promote healthy behavior… prevention and wellness… full-care management programs for those with chronic and acute conditions…
Finally… individuals must be able to purchase health care in the same tax-advantaged way as businesses do…
Together we can force action and results from policies that create market-based solutions that solve the cost and coverage problems in this country.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20070506-095007-6584r.htm
Some of the coalition members: PepsiCo, General Mills, Pacific Gas and Electric, Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co., The Kroger Co., Aetna, Blue Shield of California, Cigna HealthCare, Eli Lilly and Co. and PacifiCare.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-health7may07,0,4141456.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
We emphatically welcome the business community into the national dialogue on reform. But does this effort really advance reform?
Burd’s proposal is an individual mandate to purchase unaffordable or inadequate private insurance, using regressive tax policies, with greater administrative excesses of care management programs, and it depends on the
fiction of consumer cost management through transparency.
Burd’s bird will never fly.