Lower costs to fix health care

Last week, Congress moved forward in the health care debate by introducing two draft bills, one in the House and one in the Senate. For those of us from upstate New York, this debate is long overdue. As a small businessman, I understand that health care reform is not only critical for healthy families and strong businesses, but it's also a critical component of long-term economic recovery.

Today, roughly 11.2 million people in New York get health insurance on the job, where family premiums average $13,971, about the annual earning of a full-time minimum wage job, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Small businesses face similar pressures as employer-provided health insurance costs have increased by a staggering 120 percent in the last nine years, as reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation's annual survey on employer-sponsored health benefits. Our nation has the most expensive health care system in the world, and yet we are no healthier for it. The result is not only unhealthy Americans, but also strained family budgets and struggling businesses.

While we can all agree on the need for health care reform, there are many ideas on how to best achieve our goal of affordable health care for all Americans. Before we throw money at a broken system, we need to make fundamental reforms to reduce the overall cost of health care. We must focus on cutting waste, creating a system based on healthy outcomes and driving competition.

First, we need to change the fundamentals of the health care system. Instead of payments for providers based on the number of tests and procedures they do, our system should reward healthy outcomes for patients.

Second, we need to create national administrative standards for billing forms and codes, as well as procedures for the approval of treatments. According to a national study conducted by Weill Cornell Medical College, the cost of interaction between physician practices and health plans is roughly $31 billion annually, making up 6.9 percent of the total costs for physician and clinical services.

Not only does this waste money, it also wastes time. In the past two years, we have seen physicians spend the equivalent of three weeks per year, nurses more than 23 weeks per physician per year, and clerical staff 44 weeks per physician per year, interacting with health plans.

This bureaucratic nightmare has to stop. The insurance companies might complain, but the introduction of standard forms, codes and practices will cut waste and encourage providers to focus on healthier patients instead of red tape.

Third, we need a plan that sets a standard for the level of quality health care coverage deserved by all Americans. For example, I support the concept of a market-driven public option designed to compete with the private insurance market on a level playing field. The inclusion of such a plan in the free market system will provide more choice for consumers thus creating more competition and ultimately driving down costs. Having a public option would allow customers to more easily compare coverage packages offered by different insurance plans.
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The Source
Times Union
By SCOTT MURPHY
First published in print: Friday, July 24, 2009
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