As we wait for a Secretary of Health and Human Services to be named, we think it is important to start to shape a fresh direction for a new health care system. We want to paint a positive picture of what that system could look like. So, over the next couple of weeks we will offer some ABCs of a new system.

These elements arose from five years active work on the ground with the American public. These elements can also be used to judge existing legislative proposals:

A

Accountable: No accountability currently exists. Not of insurers to employers; providers to patient outcomes; patients to their doctors.

A Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan type model adds accountability by tying insurers profits to specific performance criteria. (Profit Analyst Factors.)

Accessible: Everyone needs to be covered. Unless everyone is covered the costs of care for the uninsured will continue to be passed along to those of us who have coverage.

The easiest way to do this is to keep the employer-based system. 60% of all the people who have private health insurance have it through their employers. People can keep what they have.

Affordable: Health care will only be come affordable if we cover everyone, have a basic set of benefits for everyone, and electronic medical records.

Having one set of benefits as a baseline for everyone will reduce waste, administrative costs and errors; reduce confusion and reduce the need for eligibility and authorization verification of benefits. Employers and individuals can buy up, if they so choose.

B

Basic Benefit Package: When we all have the same basic package, we will finally have the freedom to take any job we want. We will have more economic opportunities and choices, because our benefits will not depend on where we work. Employers and individuals may buy more benefits, should they wish and add more services, if they are willing to pay for it.

This simplicity will not only give more people peace of mind, it will reduce administrative complexities and lead eventually to lower costs.

Basic Benefits: Several different models exist for a basic benefit package: Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan; Medicare; Medicaid; state plans, such as Washington state’s Basic Health Plan. The critical issue is to select a package—which should include mental health as well as physical health.

external-linkWe’re Back! 

Please pardon our hiatus!  We moved our offices; were stranded in snow;  were terribly snarled up with e-mail and server problems; were traveling to DC and back just before the Inaugural; were swept up in finding an article I wrote in 1959 on the integration of my junior high school in Arlington, VA and having a new article I wrote appear in the February 1^st, Washington Post—nearly 50 years to the day Virginia schools were integrated and Obama became president.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/30/AR2009013003440.html

This week we will be sending out a new Dispatch thanks to a grant from Democracy in Action.  Nature and politics abhor vacuums, and with Daschle’s withdrawal from the HHS and White House posts, the old advocates and trying to push their “dead ideas” of single payer health care into the current vacuum.  We want to paint a new picture. We will start painting that picture this week. 

Pardon our long silence.  We’re back! 

Cheers and more later.  Kathleen