Nine Health Leaders Respond to Obama's Health Reform Speech

"The other observation is that the whole speech was based on the construct that illness is the accident. I tend to be more concerned about the 50% of costs that are based on unhealthy behaviors or the part of healthcare that is less of an accident and more from irresponsibility. Any program that will truly impact cost must address this.

"So I'd say a very compelling case was made for health reform 1.0. These are important reforms and hard to get done, but should only be viewed as a first step."

Tracey Moorhead
President and CEO
DMAA: The Care Continuum Alliance
"We welcome the President's support tonight for expanded coverage of preventive care and his recognition of prevention and wellness as important tools for controlling the cost of chronic illness. But improving quality and reducing costs require broad-scale reform that moves our system from reactive care to promotion of health as a shared national resource. This will require payments and incentives aligned across all providers, purchasers, and consumers toward a goal of improved health."

Bob Stone
Co-founder and executive vice president
Healthways
"The President outlined a clear set of principles for what has now clearly been acknowledged as health insurance reform rather than healthcare reform. Arguably, a bill that included these provisions would go a long way toward addressing the issues of the uninsured, the under-insured, and those with insurance who have been treated less than scrupulously by bad actors among the insurance industry. It is less than clear, however, that this plan will do anything to lower healthcare costs.

"In fact, the absence of any reference to meaningful health promotion, prevention or chronic care management plans was disappointing given the years of evidence that 'supply side' and financial fixes—other than price controls—don't work (and even price controls didn't work long). Without a commitment to making America a healthier country—not just one where illness is more affordable to treat—it is unlikely that real cost savings or quality improvement will manifest. Unfortunately, that commitment was absent tonight.

"There are also clearly inappropriate and unnecessary costs in the current system and all should support the President's call to weed those out so that those dollars can be applied to the cost of his proposed plan. I am less than sanguine, however, that such an effort will have any great or sustained success. Even if it does, you can only capture those dollars once.

"While that may help defray some costs over the next decade, what happens after that if the plan doesn't actually reduce cost? And while we're on the financial points, if my math is right, the $1,000/year currently being paid by the insured to subsidize care for the uninsured totals about $1.5 billion a year (assuming 155 million commercially insured, which may be a little light), or about $1.4 trillion over the next decade. Are all the insured folks going to get that money back? If not, what's it going to be used for? Are the insurance companies going to pay it to the government to fund the new plan?"

Stan Nowak
CEO
Silverlink Communications, Inc.
"The President delivered a powerful speech last night on the critical need for healthcare reform. He's right to focus on the issue of access and the costs of doing nothing. But it's just as perilous to our country to do nothing about the true drivers of healthcare costs—the personal health decisions made daily by all Americans.

"By incenting individuals to make better health decisions, we can save our country millions of lives and billions of dollars—ultimately bending the cost curve to make real progress in healthcare reform."

Follow Les Masterson on Twitter.