At the Hospital of Tomorrow leadership forum in Washington, D.C., earlier this week, Len Nichols, PhD, director of and professor at the Center for Health Policy Research and Ethics at George Mason University, asked four leading healthcare executives what they believe to be the proper role for government in healthcare. Their enlightening responses are transcribed below (with slight edits for clarity).
Michael D. Robinson, Vice President, United States Health & Life Sciences, Microsoft: The way I look at it, is that a lot is happening very rapidly in terms of the change. And I think…government needs to catch up a little bit in terms of some of the policy issues and some of the support that’s needed by the industry for new payment models and incentives. You know, we’re moving from fee-for-service to value outcomes and paying for outcomes. And so, I think the government has to play a critical role in making that evolution.
Shalom Jacobovitz, CEO, American College of Cardiology: As Michael said, I think I would totally agree with everything he said…they need to not potentially get in the way. You know, they need to facilitate the ability for us to do this, but also not get in the way by creating partisan or even bipartisan legislation which complicates our ability to be able to create this essential connection.
Peter L. Slavin, MD, President, Massachusetts General Hospital: I would just add, being based in Massachusetts, we’ve been at health reform or enhancing access for now about seven years. We’ve seen that it is possible for state government to create a system of what we used to call the Connector, that was a marketplace for insurance for people who were previously uninsured; put in place individual premium subsidies and an individual mandate and employer mandate; and bring the rate of uninsured from 10 percent down to 2 percent. So, we’ve seen that government can play a very effective role in creating a structure in which both private insurance and public insurance can be expanded to a larger population of people. And also, in Massachusetts over the last five years, healthcare costs have grown more slowly than the rest of the country, so the notion that expanding access is gonna blow the budget of this country, I don’t think is well-founded.
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