Leavitt Urges Health Care Reform to Avoid Economic Armageddeon
With a final vote on health care reform drawing near, former Gov. Mike Leavitt said Friday the approach preferred by House and Senate Democratic leaders is a government takeover of health care that doesn’t address the real problem — cost.
“It addresses the problem backwards. We ought to be dealing with the cost so that people can continue to afford [health insurance],” said Leavitt, who served as secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush until last year.
In a speech to the Utah chapter of the Association for Corporate Growth, Leavitt laid out his vision of economic Armageddon if health care isn’t fixed soon.
For how many years was Leavitt the secretary of Health and Human Services? So how much got done in reforming health care under his administration? WC will look into that question, but for now at least, welcome to the discussion Mr. Leavitt. However, please put your self-interest in protecting health insurance on the shelf. You are not going to be a constructive voice if your first goal is to protect the insurance industry from which you gained your enormous wealth.
The country, he said, could end up like Argentina, which crippled itself by borrowing too heavily to finance public pensions. Over time, the country’s once-thriving economy was brought to its knees by debt, which sparked runaway inflation, political unrest and financial turmoil.
The U.S. doesn’t provide public pensions, but it does have medical entitlements that are paid for largely by enormous borrowing from China and Japan, Leavitt said.
“Will we make the same mistake [as Argentina]? That’s the context in which we must address health reform,” said Leavitt, who has created a consulting company to help businesses navigate the federal bureaucracy.
Afterward, Leavitt said every American needs to be insured, but instead of insuring everybody and controlling the system, the government should organize the health care market in ways that induce insurers and health care providers to cut costs while preserving consumer choice.
“You can begin to reward quality. The system, as it’s currently situated, rewards more health care as opposed to better health care,” said Leavitt, who went on to say that some insurers and health care providers are developing reimbursement methods that make it worthwhile to keep people healthy instead of simply paying for medical care when they are sick.
Leavitt said Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Healthcare, which has an insurance arm, “is a great example of that. No one has it perfect, but Intermountain does deserve to be recognized as an innovator in this.”
Leavitt did not exempt consumers from his analysis of runaway health care costs. He said the best thing Americans can do to control costs would be to live healthier lives.
“Seventy five percent of all the costs we pay are from chronic diseases, which are fundamentally preventable or manageable,” he said. “If you look at the cost equation, that’s No. 1.”
Consumers also need better price information if they are going to be expected to make better medical care choices, Leavitt said.
“You can walk into a hospital anyplace in this country and ask how much something costs, and they’ll tell you they don’t know,” he said. “And the reason is because it is a hodgepodge of charges that have been negotiated between someone and another person.
“You have to make the system more transparent,” Leavitt said.