David Dayen writes for The American Prospect on key elements of health care reform, and he makes clear that universal coverage alone won’t cut it. We need structural improvements.
“The structure of the American health care system is driving higher costs, worse outcomes, and medical worker misery. Adding new structures that replicate the old, cover only portions of the system, or fail to strike at the heart of the matter will inevitably fail, and a stressed public will look at the war to take credit for a meaningless improvement they don’t feel and wonder what planet Washington policymakers are from,” writes Dayen
The American Economic Liberties Project has just released “Break Up Big Medicine,” a paper that exposes the drivers of excessive health care costs in the US, including corporations, hospital and other consolidations, and middlemen all of whom are bent on making money off of health care. As a result, we spend about $15,000 per person on health care, roughly 20 percent of our economy.
What is to be done beyond guaranteeing health care coverage for all? Government should:
- Prohibit insurers and other corporations from owning physicians and hospitals.
- Prohibit pharmacy benefit managers from owning pharmacies.
- Ban private equity from owning doctors, hospitals and nursing homes or hold private equity responsible for negligence when patients die or become hurt.
Government should control or invest more in certain parts of the health care system, such as:
- PBMs, as Ohio and Kentucky have done for their Medicaid populations, to expand access, save money and ensure pharmacists are paid appropriately.
- Manufacturing some prescription drugs, as California plans to do.
- Standardizing prices
- Supporting more community health centers
- Eliminating prior authorization
