Leading Scholars Offer U.S. Healthcare Reform Solutions Designed to Break Partisan Gridlock
PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec. 10, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Prominent business scholars and policy analysts recommend reforming the U.S. healthcare system with solutions designed to build bipartisan buy-in, including: greater competition; a public insurance option; cost transparency; and the mandated measurement of patient health outcomes. The proposals were outlined in 10 articles published today in a special issue of Health Management, Policy and Innovation (HMPI).
HMPI is published by the Business School Alliance for Health Management (BAHM), a consortium of 17 top business school health management programs.
"It is time that the U.S. – one of the strongest healthcare innovators globally, if not the strongest – takes a global lead in creating a healthcare system that offers a robust combination of access, quality and cost-effectiveness," said Will Mitchell, HMPI's editor, a business professor at the University of Toronto and a Duke University faculty member. "We believe that the ideas in this issue will generate conversations that can lead to strong solutions with bipartisan support."
With healthcare looming large in the 2020 election, and with major disagreements within and between political parties, HMPI issued a call for papers that offer bipartisan solutions in the event a Democrat were to win the presidency and Republicans retain control of the Senate.
In response, scholars and policy analysts at the American Enterprise Institute, Stanford University, Harvard Business School, the Wharton School and Baylor University, among other institutions, laid out recommendations that seek to bridge ideologies, political talking points and regional differences. The proposals include:
- The mandated measurement and disclosure of health outcomes, healthcare processes, cost, pricing and quality-cost combinations
- Competition among a mix of public, private, and non-profit providers and insurers, including the option to secure government-run health insurance
- Moving the focus from short-term medical treatment to longer-term decision-making—such as health management and long-term insurance planning
- Distributed decision-making, such as issuing block grants to states, subject to national performance objectives, to support local and individual healthcare preferences and cost objectives
"We were concerned that the health care debate was too focused on a single concept of Medicare for All, and not addressing some of the underlying challenges of the system that touch everyone in the country. This debate needs to be broader to ensure that we have solutions that can really help those struggling with the costs of health care and health insurance, and can be implemented in 2021," said Dr. Kevin Schulman, professor of medicine at Stanford and president of BAHM, HMPI's publisher.
Schulman and Mitchell, as well as scholars from Harvard Business School and the University of Minnesota's Medical Industry Leadership Institute, will discuss the proposals outlined in HMPI in a global webinar on Monday, Jan. 13 at 6pm EST.
About the Business School Alliance for Health Management
Formed in 2010, the Business School Alliance for Health Management (BAHM) is a consortium of 17 leading business school health management programs that supports faculty, students, and graduates in advancing education and thought leadership in the field. BAHM initiatives include an annual case competition, educational webinars, and Health Management, Policy and Innovation (HMPI), a quarterly journal that examines the challenges of the health sector from a business perspective.
SOURCE Business School Alliance for Health Management
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