The Wrong Conversation On Health Care

We are having the wrong conversation on health care in this country. Or, at best, an incomplete conversation. And we are setting the wrong expectations for the American people.

Nowhere is this more evident than on the campaign trail. The wrong conversation focuses only on the uninsured—a serious problem—but not the only health care challenge we face. We must also focus on spiraling costs, medical accidents, frivolous lawsuits, and wellness and prevention.

The wrong conversation promises Cadillac benefits and services with the promise that "someone else" will pay for them. It demands little responsibility from each of us as patients to keep ourselves healthy, or as consumers to get informed and make sound decisions in the marketplace.

The wrong conversation finds us grasping for the silver bullet solution—such as universal coverage, a single payer system, or an employer mandate—as if these tactics would magically resolve our health care challenges.

But, in fact, we need broader, bottom-up reforms across the board to deal with the magnitude of the challenges we face. When a patient is wheeled into the emergency room with a broken arm, a broken leg, and internal injuries, doctors don't just treat the broken arm and expect him to be healthy—you treat all of his injuries. In the same way, our health care solutions must address all these challenges holistically, or reform will ultimately be ineffective.

The good news is we can do better. We can build and maintain the best health care system in the world—improving access, quality, and affordability for all. What would that system look like? It would have a strong employer-provided component and a robust individual market with affordable premiums and portable policies ...

It would be a system connected by state-of-the-art interoperable IT with electronic medical records and other information that could be shared quickly throughout the health care supply chain ...

It would empower consumers with easily accessible information on providers and procedures so that they can make better informed decisions and reduce overall costs ...

It would put the focus on wellness and prevention and promote personal responsibility ...

And it would offer a higher quality of care with fewer medical errors, less defensive medicine, and care that is delivered more efficiently by outstanding medical personnel.

Now, the hard part—how do we get there? And how do we get there without sacrificing the many things that American health care does very, very well? Stay tuned next week ...