Quit Wasting My Healthcare

Obama’s Healthcare Plan

I get asked almost every other day what I think about Obama’s healthcare plan.  You can read it yourself by following this link – http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/HealthPlanOverview.pdf.

The most I can say about this plan is that it sounds nice.  I want there to be better healthcare technology and affordable health insurance.  It would also make our jobs at Compass easier if hospitals had to disclose true costs and meaningful quality metrics.  Unfortunately, these are all just platitudes and there are no plan specifics as to how these goals would be accomplished or funded.

The reality is that new healthcare technology is overwhelming complex, expensive, and difficult to implement.  Revealing true costs to consumers would be nice if there weren’t confidentiality agreements in place legally preventing costs from being shared.  Healthcare has only become more fragmented as physicians have continued to sub-specialize and open their own surgery centers.  To compete, hospitals have focused on patient experience and service thereby losing focus on what’s necessary to deliver value centric care.

Cost is an entirely different dimension with no mention by Obama how he intends to change the current payment system.  My understanding is that he intends to leave it alone, continuing the hidden tax all regular consumers pay through higher premiums to subsidize Medicare, Medicaid, and the uninsured.  If you leave the hidden tax in place, you simply have to increase taxes somewhere else to pay for what by all accounts sounds like a major and costly – to the tune of 65 Billion - extension of a traditional insurance program (federal blue cross blue shield) to all uninsured Americans.  In a cratering economy, a major healthcare tax increase sounds like a major stretch even for the amazing Obama.

So when people ask me what I think about Obama’s health plan, I tell them not much.  There isn’t much there to actually comment on that would have any basis in today’s reality or be practical in the near-term.  I simply come back to my position that thefastest way to lower cost, extend care, and make a difference is for the everyday individual to become better consumers of healthcare and demand the changes that will truly make a difference.