the coalition helped ensure that the recently enacted health care reform legislation contained several provisions to slow the rise in health care spending.
...The coalition consists of more than 40 health care systems, clinics and organizations.
More than a fourth of them are from Wisconsin. Members include many of the country's most respected health care systems, such as Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic.
They were brought together by a common goal: changing the way doctors and hospitals are paid from a system that pays for quantity instead of quality.
"If we don't do that, then the other changes we make around the edges are still not going to do the two things we need most," said Jeff Thompson, a physician and chief executive of Gundersen Lutheran Health System in La Crosse. "We need to improve the reliability of health care, and we need to decrease the cost of that care."
As anyone with common sense knows, quality is NOT a "cost". Doing it right (or better) the first time is a helluvalot better than doing it over again.
We have to begin to push away from the 3rd Party/HMO model as well.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I am glad to see some small nuggets at real reform attempts made it past Pelosi. That Kind and Co. could get these provisions in at the 11th hour proves how close that vote was. May Stupak rot in hell.