On November 12^th, Senator max Baucus gave us some insight into where healthcare reform in this country will be headed under the new leadership.  He published a white paper, Call to Action Health Reform 2009. 

In this document he laid out a plan that had three main goals:  1)  Ensuring health coverage for all Americans; 2)  Improving health care quality and value; and 3)  Achieving greater efficiency and sustainable financing.  In the white paper he discusses that we may have reached a tipping point where the main stakeholders in the process – consumers, businesses, labor, providers, plans, manufacturers and state and local governments – cannot afford the cost increases and cost shifting any longer and are willing to engage in serious reform efforts. 

To achieve these goals he wants to set up insurance exchanges that allow all citizens to purchase insurance.  He would allow older citizens to “buy into” Medicare and lower eligibility to those seeking access to Medicaid.  This would increase the consumer volume for many of our clients. 

Key to his whole approach is an increased focus on quality of care delivered versus volume of care delivered.  I see payments in the near future tied to improving outcomes, or as it is known, pay for performance.  To achieve these measures he will increase incentives and investments in healthcare IT (something which President-elect Obama campaigned on).   In his press conference he discussed immediately allowing providers to be incentivized to implement electronic medical records by giving them the same 2% incentive that is now available to Medicare providers for using e-prescribing (see my blog e-prescribing incentives).

Obviously this is in the early stages of development, but I think the train has left the station.