Future of Health Care Reform in U.S. Now
by Glen Hiemstra on 20/01/10 at 4:30 pm | 
The standard chorus today, following a win by Senator Elect Brown in Massachusetts, is that health care reform is either dead, or must be substantially revised to be passed into law.
I don’t know that it is dead, but it is on life support.
Somehow, in the very long process of developing the current legislation, the simple messages of improving access, covering everyone, and controlling costs, got lost.
Now, what is the way forward if you think that for the U.S. to be #1 in the world in health care spending but #37 in quality, with tens of millions uncovered, is not a good thing?
I think, and admit I missed this early on, that the simple solution would be best. This might be a piece-meal approach, or even better it could be this from Ezra Klein at the Washington Post:
“Medicare buy-in between 50 and 65. Medicaid expands up to 200 percent of poverty with the federal government funding the whole of the expansion. Revenue comes from a surtax on the wealthy.
And that’s it. No cost controls. No delivery-system reforms. Nothing that makes the bill long or complex or unfamiliar…”
Not likely to happen, but it would be a wise option.
Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, author, consultant, blogger, internet video host and Founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.
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Glen Hiemstra
Jan 21st, 2010
Clinton, thanks for the comment. You are right, the better term is health insurance reform. If you have not seen it, the book, “Healing America,” is a good resource for actually comparing the systems in other countries. Our biggest problem (besides deciding long ago to make illness a profit center) is that we have many systems, rather than one. Leads to endless complexity and high costs.
Clinton Wingrove
Jan 21st, 2010
Why does everyone keep referring to this as “Healthcare reform”? This is health INSURANCE reform; this is fundamentally different. We do not have a healthcare system in the US, only a partial insurance system.
The only moral solution is one where:
access to healthcare is only limited by:
(a) clinical need (Triage) and
(b) by total funding,
and NOT based on any personal financial criteria.
Delivery is only morally sound if we also then ADMIT to people that there HAS to be rationing – no country in the world can afford to make all treatments available to all people. We have to determine what can be cost effective in proportion to benefit. Rationing in this way may seem harsh but
(a) protects funds for treatments that produce the biggest clinical gains, and
(b) encourages providers to reduce costs to a level where they then get included.
Whether you can this socialised or not, I fail to see the logical flaw. In any event, I would rather have the people running the scheme be those who can voted out of office than people who are explicitly paid to make money out of selling insurance.