The never ending road to reforming healthcare reform.
Posted by CEP America on Wed, Jun 30, 2010 @ 09:37 AM
By Marty Ogle, MD
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", George Santayana said. He wasn't talking about healthcare reform. But he could have been
As an emergency physician, I deal with our still-broken healthcare system every day. Which got me to thinking about the long and winding road that started 17 years ago surrounding "healthcare reform". The road has not only been long, it's been bumpy.
Let's venture back to 1993, when the "architect" to fix the broken American Health Care System was none other than the US Health Care Insurance industry!
Right out of the gate, President Clinton assigned Hillary to drive the overhaul of healthcare in the U.S. Ms. Clinton plowed ahead, soliciting no input from those involved in delivering healthcare as they may biased. Instead, the ideas was to use policymakers (surely they are unbiased) and academic "experts" in health policy (certainly they know how to deliver better care to Americans). Then create a diagram that resembled UFO landing coordinates to explain it to the American People.
I remember thinking that I needn't worry because the plan would collapse under its own weight.
What I didn't see coming was the insurance companies coming up with "managed care" as the final wooden stake, just in case the Plan regained a pulse. "No need for sweeping reform", the Insurance Industry would claim. "We can control costs".
Over the years, managed care established it's "footprint" across much of America - similar to how a tornado establishes a footprint when it takes out a trailer park.
Then came 2009. The players changed, and now "ObamaCare" was here. Sort of. The bipartisan version of ObamaCare didn't work so well and the Dems and their colleagues across the aisle couldn't agree on anything. So the President took things into his own hands, developed ObamaCare and put on a bipartisan summit. Great news, except that the Dems and Republicans still couldn't agree to agree. In fact, the Democrats had trouble agreeing with each other.
But wait - let's try politics! Get the AMA's support by promising an SGR fix. Mollify the Hispanic Caucus by providing Immigration Reform (yeah, that worked). And so it went.
Sadly, it was not to be. And ObamaCare limped to a halt. Except a gaffe by the Insurance Industry gave the plan an 11th hour "elixir of life".
Public indignation caused by Anthem Blue Cross's announcement that they were raising premiums 39% for thousands of policyholders pushed ObamaCare across the finish line, with the assist of some questionable procedural footwork in Congress.
So there you have it; a rather truncated history of U.S. healthcare reform over the last 17 years. Don't you feel better off? Or maybe we should start over. I hear Bill Clinton is looking for work!
I look forward to your comments.