A Different Approach to Healthcare Reform
Published: 2009-09-28 21:30:51
Author: Brian Bell | Press Connects | September 7, 2009
Our national politicians aim to provide a blueprint for reforming our healthcare system within a few months in a single comprehensive piece of legislation. That would be a daunting goal, even in a political environment of bipartisanship, rational objective debate, strong executive leadership, and politicians not beholden to lobbyists. But the antics inside the Beltway demonstrate extreme partisanship, emotional and deceptive scare tactics, weak executive leadership, and lobbyists exercising disproportionate influence on the legislation. The only hope for effective reform in this irrational environment is to change the healthcare system incrementally with easy, uncontroversial solutions, identified and solved quickly.
Our current healthcare system is large, inefficient, bureaucratic, complicated, expensive and at times consumer hostile. It evolved from disability insurance starting around the middle of the 20th century. Over the past 50 to 60 years it has morphed into a maze of government and private insurance providers (with different insurance regulations from state to state), employer contributions, federal and state (taxpayer) funded programs, and for-profit and not-for-profit healthcare providers, all with different unconnected databases containing patient information. Although, in general, the quality of care is high, there are availability problems, and its cost has been increasing at a pace much greater than the rate of inflation. Also, the insurance companies are positioned between the patient and the healthcare providers, thereby exerting too much influence on patient care.
Our federal government currently seems obsessed with fixing all of the problems with this system at once. The current priority, as defined by our President and congressional leaders, is to get a bill signed this year. Apparently political ego is driving the legislative process, rather than the desire to get it right. To sooth those of us nervous about the end result, we've been assured that the solutions being considered are based on input from all the “stakeholders” (politic-speak for “lobbyists”). If the current process plays out, the bill will be another 1,300 page document written by lobbyists, with important changes introduced at the 11th hour, unread by the congressmen and voted on in the wee hours of the morning just before the holiday recess. The result will be a cobbled together healthcare system created in crisis mode, with a frenzy of lobbying and backroom deal making by politicians whose most important concern is getting re-elected. A better solution would result with much less public anxiety if our politicians took a slower, incremental and transparent approach. The problems with our current system should be identified and prioritized, then solved individually, while assuring that each solution reduces cost to the consumer and the taxpayer. Each legislative solution would provide less opportunity for back room political wheeling and dealing. And each bill might even be brief enough to be read and understood by our congressmen before they vote on it.
Full story
Published: 2009-09-28 21:30:51
Author: Brian Bell | Press Connects | September 7, 2009
Our national politicians aim to provide a blueprint for reforming our healthcare system within a few months in a single comprehensive piece of legislation. That would be a daunting goal, even in a political environment of bipartisanship, rational objective debate, strong executive leadership, and politicians not beholden to lobbyists. But the antics inside the Beltway demonstrate extreme partisanship, emotional and deceptive scare tactics, weak executive leadership, and lobbyists exercising disproportionate influence on the legislation. The only hope for effective reform in this irrational environment is to change the healthcare system incrementally with easy, uncontroversial solutions, identified and solved quickly.
Our current healthcare system is large, inefficient, bureaucratic, complicated, expensive and at times consumer hostile. It evolved from disability insurance starting around the middle of the 20th century. Over the past 50 to 60 years it has morphed into a maze of government and private insurance providers (with different insurance regulations from state to state), employer contributions, federal and state (taxpayer) funded programs, and for-profit and not-for-profit healthcare providers, all with different unconnected databases containing patient information. Although, in general, the quality of care is high, there are availability problems, and its cost has been increasing at a pace much greater than the rate of inflation. Also, the insurance companies are positioned between the patient and the healthcare providers, thereby exerting too much influence on patient care.
Our federal government currently seems obsessed with fixing all of the problems with this system at once. The current priority, as defined by our President and congressional leaders, is to get a bill signed this year. Apparently political ego is driving the legislative process, rather than the desire to get it right. To sooth those of us nervous about the end result, we've been assured that the solutions being considered are based on input from all the “stakeholders” (politic-speak for “lobbyists”). If the current process plays out, the bill will be another 1,300 page document written by lobbyists, with important changes introduced at the 11th hour, unread by the congressmen and voted on in the wee hours of the morning just before the holiday recess. The result will be a cobbled together healthcare system created in crisis mode, with a frenzy of lobbying and backroom deal making by politicians whose most important concern is getting re-elected. A better solution would result with much less public anxiety if our politicians took a slower, incremental and transparent approach. The problems with our current system should be identified and prioritized, then solved individually, while assuring that each solution reduces cost to the consumer and the taxpayer. Each legislative solution would provide less opportunity for back room political wheeling and dealing. And each bill might even be brief enough to be read and understood by our congressmen before they vote on it.
Full story