President's statement moving forward with health care reform

Insuring Resources Commentary:


It will be interesting to see if the measure includes the cost control measures on health CARE that I have promoted since the beginning. When I started this post I realized that it is the 99th post I have entered on this blog. When I started this in August I did not envision posting 99 items. I certainly did not envision this process lasting until March. There are several items I disagree with in the Senate bill, including the Cornhusker Kickback and some others. I belive there should be a stronger employer mandate. I believe the abortion language should be tougher.

But the most egregious error by far is the omission of a game changer on the way health care is financed. This is a BI-PARTISAN issue as Republicans have been shouting about this from the beggining. Obama started the whole process during his campaign talking about this but now barely utters a word on it. If this had been the center piece of health care reform I believe strongly that we would have had a bi-partisan bill passed before The end of 2009.

We must have a health care reform bill that includes, at the very least, efficiency and quality provider incentives across all payment sources- Medicare, Medicaid and the private health plans. I realize implementing this takes time but we could do it incrementally like the incentives in place right now for electronic medical records that were passed in the ARRA last February.

We should change health care financing to an EPISODE of CARE reimbursement, rather than fee-for-service. This change would create higher quality and efficiency of care. We could easily implement these changes in Medicare by 2014 and the whole system by 2017 and manintain the private health market like the Republicans want. We wouldn't need a public plan option if we followed the above prescription.
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President Obama 3/6/10:
“This week, I asked Congress to schedule a final vote on reform that will give families and businesses more control over their health care by holding insurance companies more accountable. This comes after nearly a year of debate, as well as a seven hour summit with Democrats and Republicans where we had a public and substantive discussion on health care. Since then, I’ve said that I’m willing to incorporate some ideas offered by Republicans, and we’re eliminating special provisions that had no place in health care reform.

Now, despite all the progress and improvements we’ve made, Republicans in Congress insist that the only acceptable course on health care is to start over. But you know what? The insurance companies aren’t starting over."