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April 20, 2007
Former Bush Cabinet Member Advocates Right to Health Care
We were lucky enough to hear Paul O'Neill, former Bush Cabinet member deliver the keynote address at the 20th Anniversary conference of the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council (PHC4) yesterday in Harrisburg. PHC4 is an internationally recognized state agency that collects and publishes health care data to help promote industry improvement.
What did O'Neill say?
"With all its wealth, it's time for America to define health care as a right."
"Americans who are better off should accept an obligation to help pay for those who can't afford it.""Americans should give serious thought to a 'pool' to cover health care costs."
You can find these quotes in the Patriot News.
O'Neill also noted that process improvement and spreading best practice is the key to improving quality and achieving cost savings.
This means a key issue for policy is how you improve and disseminate improved processes. Competition in health care does not always foster improvement or dissemination, and can impede it.
What does foster improvement? Cooperation and peer learning among committed professionals, spurred in some cases by public reporting on outcomes such as done by PHC4.
Pennsylvania could do a lot worse than implement state health-care reform informed by the analysis that O'Neill outlined.
Posted by Herzenberg at April 20, 2007 11:40 AM