Our broken health care ‘system’—the drumbeat for change grows stronger
By Bill Settlemyer
Executive Publisher
You might wonder about the sanity of someone who spends his weekends reading about health insurance and the health care policy solutions proposed by the presidential candidates.
And in fact, I began to wonder about my sanity after a weekend of doing just that. The policy statements on the Bush campaign web site were sketchy and hardly even began to address the looming problems with health care coverage in this country.
Conversely, as you might expect, the Kerry site had 11 dense pages of detailed policy proposals. His presentation was more realistic in addressing the scope and severity of the problem, but his proposals will be off-putting to those who worry about adding layers of federal mandates, regulations and government funded programs to those already in place.
A safe harbor—sort of
Happily, I found something of a safe harbor in a report released last month by the National Coalition on Health Care, which includes nearly 100 of the country’s largest businesses, unions, provider groups, insurers, pension funds and consumer and religious organizations. Together, they represent at least 150 million Americans, a good-sized voting block by any measure, for those politicians who may be paying attention.
The group describes itself as “rigorously non-partisan.” Former presidents Bush, Carter and Ford are the honorary chairs of the coalition. The co-chairs are a former Republican governor and a former Democratic congressman.
The membership of the group is diverse, including AARP, AFL-CIO (various unions), Alcoa, AT&T, BellSouth, Bi-Lo, Blue Shield of California, General Electric, National Consumers League, Pfizer, Quest Communications, UnitedHealth Group, United Methodist Church and Verizon.
Full information about the Coalition and its positions, including their recent report, “Building a Better Health Care System—Specifications for Reform,” can be found at www.nchc.org.
‘9/11 Report’ for health care
The report, in my view, does for health care issues what the 9/11 Commission’s report has done for our efforts to meet the threat of international terrorist groups. The Coalition has presented five no-nonsense goals for a reformed health care system:
– Health care coverage for all
– Cost management
– Improvement of health care quality and safety
– Equitable financing
– Simplified administration
These broadly stated goals can be achieved in different ways as detailed in the report. But what’s most important is that this very diverse collection of interest groups is calling on us to join together to overcome the chaotic mess that currently passes for our “health care system.” Indeed, a primary message of the report is that what we have now can hardly be called a system. It’s more of a patchwork quilt driven by competing economic interests and the lack of a national commitment to work together for reform.
“Comprehensive health care reform is long overdue,” says the report. “Every year that reform is delayed, tens of millions of Americans live in peril, without health insurance; millions are harmed, and hundreds of thousands die needlessly because of substandard care; and health care costs continue to spiral ever upwards.
“America is already a nation of health care haves and have-nots. Reform should aim to assure that all Americans receive excellent health care and are able to enjoy the quality of life and peace of mind for which such care is essential.”
The report also stresses that change must be “systemic” and “system wide.” In other words, if we just tinker with one or two aspects of problem, we’ll never put anything together that has a real chance of success.
What won’t work
The report does not land on one particular approach to meeting the goals. Clearly, new laws, regulations and government programs will be required, but the coalition stops short of calling for a single government-run national health insurance plan like the ones found in other Western industrialized nations.
What definitely won’t work is simply providing more funding for individuals to go out and buy coverage for one person or family at a time. This “free market” approach totally disregards the reality that individual consumers have little control over the vast and complex economic systems that drive health care costs and limit the quality and accessibility of care. Yes, it’s true that more discriminating “buying decisions” by consumers is a part of the solution, but only a small part.
The sad truth is that political, economic and ideological divisions and the tenacity of special interest groups in putting their own interests above the common good are depriving our country of the opportunity to make the best and most intelligent choices for the future of health care. To succeed, we must overcome these divisions and work for consensus.
Think nationally, act locally
The coalition report recommends against reliance on state-by-state solutions, but also says, “progress can and should be made in individual states pending the passage of national legislation to cover all Americans.”
Here in South Carolina, there’s some very good work being done in state government and through business and civic initiatives to address many of the key issues raised in the coalition report.
Above all, I am convinced that we in the business community must play a key role in bringing government, health care providers and civic and business leaders together to forge solutions that will enable us to improve the delivery of health care in South Carolina. We can no longer afford the cost of sitting on the sidelines; the health and productivity of our employees, their families and all the citizens of this state cannot be left to chance.
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