The president’s health reform plan will ensure that people with pre-existing conditions can purchase affordable insurance coverage. It will end annual and lifetime limits on coverage, prevent insurers from dropping people when they get sick and increase their rates, and allow small businesses to receive tax credits to help them pay for employee insurance. It will also strengthen consumer protections and make insurance companies more accountable to consumers by requiring them to disclose their rate increases and establishing an independent appeals process to resolve disputes. The plan will also put an end to Medicare fraud and abuse, which has been estimated to cost American taxpayers $60 billion a year.
The need for healthcare reform is widely understood. Everyone is tired of the unsustainable status quo-increasing costs, inadequate coverage and sub-par quality of care. Real reform is not possible by tweaking individual components of the system-it must be comprehensive and take into account all aspects of it.
Those who know the system well understand that returning to those mythical good old Marcus Welby days is impossible and that we must move forward with a new model that is data driven, patient centered, transparent, and designed to create a bridge across the quality chasm. Buyers, patients, and policy makers are beginning to realize that this is a task that can only be accomplished by rethinking the way our current system operates. This means not only changing its structure, but the processes and incentives that drive it.