Former Medicaid Director: Health Care Reform Will Probably Work
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December 28, 2009
CHARLESTON, W.Va. - At its most basic level, health care reform has to do two things: It would get nearly everyone into the system and it would reduce overall costs. But according to former national Medicaid director Sally Richardson, those goals are really the same thing. Richardson was a member of the Clinton administration health care task force and is now the executive director of the WVU Institute for Health Policy Research. She says the key is getting people to move away from crisis medicine and toward prevention.
"We must focus on prevention and wellness, so your first encounter with the health system is not when you have pneumonia, your first encounter is going to a community health center when you've got a really bad cold that is getting worse."
Richardson says the incentives and subsides in the current bill would do that. According to an analysis by one MIT economist, after several years of transition, the Senate bill would cut premiums and out-of-pocket costs by three quarters for a family near West Virginia's median income.
What is known as the "public option" - public insurance for people not covered by other plans - has been replaced in the Senate bill with unspecified nonprofit group plans administered by the federal Office of Personnel. Richardson says judging from health coverage federal employees have now, a nonprofit option should work to provide reasonably priced, no-frills insurance.
"It would be standard health care coverage, like a good Blue Cross/BlueShield plan."
Republicans have attacked the bill as an expensive, big-government takeover. However, according to the Congressional Budget Office, it actually would lower the deficit.