Seattle Post-Intelligencer
March 12, 2003
National solution best for health care
By Mary O. McWilliams
Here, in the midst of Cover the Uninsured Week, it is important that this be said: All Americans should be covered by health insurance.
To that end, I offer the following principles to guide the debate. These ideas center on the values of individual responsibility, collective accountability and equality.
* Coverage for all is a national public policy matter.
* We should focus on adding to the coverage that exists today.
* We must acknowledge that solutions will have a cost.
* We need a basic set of health benefits as the floor.
* This is a collective responsibility.
* Government-sponsored programs must be adequately funded.
* We must improve the current system.
* Consumers must have a direct relationship with the cost of care.
It is to be hoped that these concepts will further spark a meaningful debate, which must continue in earnest beyond the focus of this week.
Mary O. McWilliams is president of Regence BlueShield.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/112031_regence12.shtml
Comment: During Cover the Uninsured Week, there is a unified voice stating clearly that everyone should be covered by health insurance. Listening to the various interests, it almost sounds like we finally agree that we must have a universal, egalitarian system. But then there are always the details.
Ms. McWilliams believes in a national solution, as long as that solution protects her industry, funds it more generously, and allows it to shift the burden of actually funding health care to the individual patients, to “encourage cost- and quality-conscious purchasing.” What will her position be if it is decided to reduce expensive administrative excesses by eliminating middleman health plans and adopting a single public payer?
Cover the Uninsured Week should not only end with a resolve to cover everyone, but it should also end with a resolve to put the interests of patients above all others. Without such a resolve we will flounder and founder.