Costs

I am heartened to see health reform on the move. Today, Health CEOs for Health Reform will explain exactly why and how we can and should expect health care leaders to work together to make Americans healthier, while bending the health care cost growth curve. A credible roadmap to reduce health care cost growth will help us achieve both bipartisan reform and fiscal balance.

Information on the event (12:30pm, Senate side of the Capitol Visitors Center) is available here and their specific set of recommendations are available here.

Health CEOs for Health Reform leaders are committed to providing everyone—including our most vulnerable—the highest quality most efficient care. They are courageous because they are willing to: 

Families USA has released a report describing the costs to the insured that result from uninsured people who are unable to pay their bills. The report, entitled "Hidden Health Tax: Americans Pay a Premium," analyzes the cost-shift from the unpaid medical bills of the uninsured to those Americans with health insurance.

Key findings of the Families USA report:

• The uninsured end up paying over a third of their medical bills out of pocket. Governments and charities pick up another quarter of the cost. 
• The remaining 37 percent of the cost of the medical bills for the uninsured, or a stunning $42 billion, went unpaid in 2007.  
• That unpaid portion is passed on by providers to private insurers, who pass the cost on to the insured.

Families USA estimates that the average American family pays over $1,000 a year in higher health insurance premiums due to this cost-shift. (For an individual purchasing in the individual market, it's about $368.)The Center for American Progress found similar figures in a report earlier this year.

For years, Maine has been unwilling to wait for the federal government to tackle the crisis of health care. And with good reason: though Maine has one of the lowest rates of uninsurance, it has some of the most expensive health care in the country. One-third of the state budget goes to SCHIP/Medicaid (the highest rate in the country, the state has the highest employer contribution to the cost of employer-based insurance, and the third-highest per capita health care costs. Not surprisingly, the cost drivers that make Maine's health care so expensive are the same as those that afflict the national as a whole, according to a new report by a state advisory group.

In 2003, the Maine Legislature passed far-reaching legislation to tackle coverage and costs—including the creation of the Dirigo Health insurance program—that included aggressive collection of data that had not previously been available. Maine's Advisory Council on Health Systems Development outlined problems and proposed solutions that will look familiar to those who've followed the health reform debate at the national level.

In case you missed it, OMB director Peter Orszag was on the Daily Show Wednesday. The man who’s “made nerdy sexy” according to Rahm Emanuel, was on his game, had one thing on his mind: health care.

One of the reasons we need to get health care costs under control is because that is the key thing that is forcing us to borrow as you go out five, 10, 15 years. That’s why the President wants to get health care reform done this year because it brings down costs overt time. … The banking crisis is crucial to what’s happening this year, but as you go out over time, the thing that’s driving our fiscal future is the rate at which health cares costs are growing.

Part I below, part II after the break.