In my quest to stop talking about what’s wrong with healthcare and start talking more about what we can do about healthcare, see this post from Jane Sarasohn-Kahn:

1. Invest in better information and tools (including incentives and comparative effectiveness).

2. Transition to accountable payment systems that reward lower-cost, higher quality care (i.e., make fee-for-service ‘less attractive over time’).

3. Restructure insurance markets to pool risk outside of employment and promote on quality and cost (including scaling back employer subsidies in favor of value-based benefit design).

4. Support and encourage better choices among health citizens (e.g., nudge through copays and tiering and measure outcomes along the way).

Under Pillar #1: “Protect providers and insurers from liability when they follow best practices and implement safe systems, as identified by evidence.”
Under Pillar #2: “Increase payment rates for primary care, offset by reductions for specialty care.”

Under Pillar #3: “Cap the existing income tax exclusion for employer-provided insurance, to encourage carriers to design and workers to choose more cost-effective coverage.”

…and the big kahuna recommendation of them all,

Under Pillar #4: “Restructure Medicare Parts A and B with a global deductible and catastrophic out-of-pocket maximum.”

No surprise that not one of the 10 Gurus is an elected official…

How to bend the health cost curve in 4 simple steps, according to 10 very smart people