Epidemic of Care A Call for Safer, Better, and More Accountable Health Care

Health care premiums in the U.S. are escalating from twelve to twenty percent a year? with no end in sight. The impact of those cost increases on both employers and employees will be huge. Workers will see a direct cut in their take-home pay. Millions will lose health insurance coverage completely. Senior citizens on fixed incomes will be hit particularly hard, as premiums for their Medicare supplement plans and prescription drug costs climb. Frustrated and angry, people will soon be demanding a solution from their elected officials, and, for the first time in recent memory, the size of our unemployed population will become a real political issue rather than just the subject of energetic rhetoric. It is time to recognize that we are moving into a major health care crisis in this country, a crisis driven by the way we deliver, receive, and pay for care.
Epidemic of Care offers a comprehensive assessment of the factors behind the cost crisis, how the crisis will escalate, and what can be done to improve the situation. A blueprint for getting to a coherent national health policy, this book calls for a collaboration between different parts of the private sector, state and local governments, and, at times, the federal government? with a formula that can succeed no matter who rules Congress. Authors George C. Halvorson and George J. Isham, M.D.? two individuals who have made an impressive impact on the national health care scene? provide some practical, field-tested, sometimes controversial suggestions about how to make health care in this country more accountable, more efficient, more valuable, and more affordable.

Preface and Acknowledgments.

Foreword.

Introduction: What Happened to My Paycheck?

The Authors.

1. Miracles Cost Money.

2. Unsafe at Any Cost.

3. Who Really Pays for All of That Care?

4. If It Works or Might Work, You Owe It to Me: How Americans’ Entitlement to Care Drives Up Costs.

5. Care Monopolies.

6. Does the United States Pay Fair Prices by World Standards?

7. How the Internet Is Changing Health Care: I Learned About My Prosthesis on the Web.

8. The Coming Crunch in Health Care Workers.

9. Medical Necessity Calls, Fee Cuts, and PR Errors—Not a Good Start.

10. So Why Don’t We Just Go to a Single-Payer System and Save Bucks Like the Brits?

11. Where Do We Go from Here? A Call for a National Health Strategy.

12. Patients Deserve Safe Care.

13. 401(k) Equivalent Choices in Health Care.

14. Most Health Care Costs Are the Result of Bad Health.

15. Caregiver Monopolies Should Not Be Our Care Model of Choice.

16. Cut the Number of Uninsured in Half.

17. Training Tomorrow’s Caregivers and Reengineering Care Delivery.

18. A Call to Action.

Notes.

Index.

George C. Halvorson is chairman and CEO of Kaiser Permanente, America's leading integrated health care organization. He was formerly president and CEO of HealthPartners in Minneapolis, Minnesota and has helped start HMOs in countries around the world. Halvorson has written several books on health care topics, including the highly-praised Strong Medicine (1993).

George J. Isham, M.D., is medical director and chief health officer for HealthPartners. He is a founding board member of the Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement in Minnesota and has been a national leader in quality improvement methods.