The former Senator who will be Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services shares a lot of his new boss’s views. But in his recent book on health reform, Tom Daschle goes beyond Obama’s agenda.
The Health Blog mentioned as much yesterday, but last night we picked up a copy of the book (Critical: What We Can Do About the Health Care Crisis) to get a better sense of where Daschle might take things.
Daschle says Medicare should pay more for care that leads to good outcomes, and should stop paying for unnecessary or harmful treatments. Like Obama, he says Americans who want to keep their employer-based insurance should be allowed to do so, but people should also be able to buy insurance from the pool that covers federal employees, or from a new pool based on a similar model.
He also argues that all Americans should be required to buy health insurance — a key difference from Obama, who argues that only children should be required to have health insurance. (Plenty of powerful Dems, Max Baucus and Hillary Clinton, have also called for mandates).
Perhaps the most striking part of Daschle’s plan is his call to create a Federal Health Board, modeled on the Federal Reserve Board that manages monetary policy. The basic idea is to create an institution, run by experts, that answers to the government but is “largely insulated from the politics and passions of the moment,” he writes.
“Like monetary policy, health-care policy shouldn’t be subject to the whims of subcommittee chairmen and special interests,” Daschle continues.
The board wouldn’t regulate the private insurance market, but it would have power over federal health-care programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, whose decisions are often followed by private insurers. It would also set the terms for private insurers who wanted to participate in the federal employees’ insurance pool.
Perhaps most importantly, the Board would assess the effectiveness and costs of various treatments.
He stops short of saying the U.S. should have a U.K.-style, hard-and-fast rule on cost-effectiveness. But he does say the U.S. “won’t be able to make a significant dent in health-care spending without getting into the nitty-gritty of which treatments are the most clinically valuable and cost effective.”
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[Universal healthcare starts with the government regulating hospitals and clinics charge scale. Instead of doctors charging a set fee, different illnesses such as sinus infections, bladder infections, ear aches etc should be on lesser scale then with major issues such as heart attacks, cancer, blood infections etc.
It is common sense to me as to why citizens cannot afford healthcare, is because the price of healthcare is through the roof. Doctors are charging way too much money. Instead of curing disease/helping people doctors are more interested in making themselves rich.
If there was a plan to get doctors on board a quality healthcare plan we can all live with, then Tom Daschles blue print will be a success. (I bet it will....he is one smart cookie)]
Kade
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