Poor quality of health care is “deadly”

The Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on “Rising Costs, Low Quality in Health Care: The Necessity for Reform” where Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said the health care system needs to be reformed so all Americans have access to affordable and high quality health care.  Elizabeth McGlynn, Ph.D, associate director of RAND Health and distinguished chair in health quality, said that she has found that on average, “American adults received just 55 percent of recommended care for the leading causes of death and disability.”  She also said that “We spend nearly two trillion dollars annually on health care and we get it right about half the time” and that “poor quality is deadly.”  

Arlene Hold Baker, executive vice president of the AFL-CIO, said the AFL-CIO launched an online survey “that captured working families’ concerns about health care.”  She said 96 percent of respondents are “somewhat or very concerned about affording coverage in the next few years.”  She added that “annual premium costs for family coverage have almost doubled between 2000 and 2007″ and that “as the number of uninsured grows, so too does the cost-shifting that occurs in our fragmented system.” 

As for ideas on reforming the system, Paul Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, said cost-containment and quality-improvement are vital to get better value for the amount of money spent on health care. He also said that to increase efficiency, services with little or no value should be forgone.  McGlynn encouraged improving quality whether or not it saves money, since it’s “the right thing to do.” 

Felicia Fields, group vice president of human resources and corporate services at the Ford Motor Company, said that “a better approach is to improve health care coverage affordability by evaluating the key cost drivers of health care and how to address them.”  Some of the programs she suggested included implementing generic prescription drug substitution to control the rate of prescription drug costs, removing legislative and regulatory barriers on wellness programs, and strong federal leadership for “establishing one set of standards for health care quality and one set of basic guidelines for improving the population’s health status.”