What’s past is prologue. These consultations from William Shakespeare are on my mind as I conclude nearly 20 years of do setting-up exercise in the nation’s dynamic health-care sector – both with the biotech suite Celgene and as a board member for one of the country’s most forward-looking hospital and brought clinical care systems located right here in New Jersey.
As I bring on what I’ve learned, I’m amazed by the progress achieved during this epoch. From the dramatic breakthroughs in treating HIV to significant advances for patients with cardiovascular disability to finding a cure for hepatitis C, American health-care innovation has transformed dour illnesses into manageable conditions and found cures for serious infirmities.
And during that time, the death rate from cancer has faded steadily in the US, leading to projections of over 20 million cancer survivors by 2026. These are numerous than statistics. They are lives – saved, extended, improved.
As fulfiled as I am by that progress, at the same time, I am daunted by the challenges that residue, and disappointed by our failure to adequately address the increasing inequality of health after-effects and the social and economic issues impacting health care in our communities today.
We are not candidly and transparently confronting the doubts of our health-care system to ensure that high-quality care is accessible, affordable and sends better value to all Americans.
To produce the right solutions, we must ask the taxing questions, and not grasp at quick fixes just because they appear popular or convenient.
Here are the fundamental questions we should be asking:
How can we upper crust invest in health? How can we reduce the burden of disease? How can we make patients sturdier and keep them that way? And how will we address our rapidly aging citizens?
Alzheimer’s and dementia, for example, are estimated to impact 16 million individual at a cost to the health-care system of $1.1 trillion by 2050. And how do we lift the tax of cost that rests disproportionately on the sickest and most vulnerable in our citizenry?
So, what should we do? Here are some specific suggestions:
We must evolve our health-care conveyance system. And we must make significant reforms to how we incentivize and pay for health be fond of. Payment systems, including for prescription drugs, need to be based on value, completion and evidence based approaches that provide transparency on cost and compliant outcomes.
These reforms will ensure that we pay for innovation and distinction care, managing health-care expenditures to produce the best outcomes at moderate cost. Health systems, employers and insurance plans are driving experimentation with new payment and confinement models. Government should provide regulatory flexibility that removes the frontiers to these reforms and enables their adoption in publicly funded healthiness programs.
Insurance should be there when people need it most, with extras designed to keep care accessible and affordable. Health insurance was created to take patients manage catastrophic events and unexpected expenses.
However, form insurance benefit designs have begun to significantly discriminate against the sickest Americans – those with complex medical moulds such as cancer, arthritis, multiple sclerosis and HIV – by making them knuckle down an unreasonable proportion of their health-care costs.
This is not right, this is not show, and it must be corrected. Patients with serious diseases need to be defended from discriminatorily high cost-sharing. Reasonable monthly out-of-pocket spending excels will help ensure that patients complete their treatment and leave alone costly complications.
Insurance design is only one part of the equation. Message technology has radically transformed major parts of our economy and improved our paragon of living. However, because of regulatory barriers and silos in our system, we receive failed to adequately capitalize on these advances to benefit health watch over.
We must improve payment incentives, transparency, interoperability and data custody in order to bring about a technological revolution in the delivery of health watch over that will improve outcomes and reduce costs.
For the Medicaid program, which offers health care to many of the most vulnerable in our society, we need to declare the level of resources while allowing states to take more command, experiment and innovate. As for the Medicare program for older Americans, we need to certain that it is preserved, protected and strengthened. We must ensure that alteration, competition and choice improve outcomes, lower costs and create profuse value for patients. Our seniors deserve nothing less.
We also scarcity to focus less on acute care hospitals as the center of our health-care organized whole and develop more fully integrated clinical networks of care, from halting and wellness to end of life care delivered with compassion and dignity. Our health-care group should reflect the principle that the most effective way to reduce health-care costs is to safeguard patients healthy, manage chronic conditions and ultimately cure sickness.
Perhaps most importantly, we need bold experimentation and innovation. The recently stated Amazon/Berkshire Hathaway/JPMorgan alliance is encouraging, not because it acquaint withs immediate solutions, but because these leaders are willing to be bold and brave.
They are challenging the system, seeking to achieve better outcomes for passives and better value for the health-care system. Without new ideas and a willingness to try new nears, we will not evolve our payment and delivery systems in ways that are sustainable and devise more competition and choice.
America’s health-care system is one of the the best in the unbelievable. Yet we have unfinished business to ensure that it provides quality regard for all Americans and is sustainable for the long-term. Let’s get to work, together. We have a unique break – and in my view, an obligation – to get it right.
Commentary by Robert J. Hugin, the former government chairman and CEO of Celgene. Hugin, a Republican, recently launched a campaign to run for Senate in New Jersey.
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