The Single Solution for a Myriad of Health Care Challenges

October 31, 2024

Perspective Roundtable: Critical Health Care Challenges for the Next U.S. President
New England Journal of Medicine
October 16, 2024
By Robert J. Blendon et al.

The next U.S. president, as well as Congress and state governments, will have to address some major challenges to Americans’ health and health care. On September 27, 2024, the Journal and the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health hosted a symposium exploring three critical topics: access to health care, affordability of care, and health and health care equity.

 

Comment by: Don McCanne & Jim Kahn

This NEJM article is quite long because it is a transcript of the entire symposium, but you should read it anyway because it represents where we are on the policy issues that currently impact our health care system in the United States, and where we should be going, in the opinion of these noted health policy experts.

So where do our policy academics and the government policy community stand today?

Much of the discussion you will be able to relate to since it addresses issues covered by the press and in the lay literature. You will find points with which you agree and other points with which you either disagree or which have not been addressed adequately by the policy community.

Since many of you are quite knowledgeable about health policy and the single payer model of reform, you will likely discover that most of the policy issues for which these experts have not provided satisfactory solutions can be quite satisfactorily addressed in a well-designed single payer model. We discussed this failure of health policy economists and other policy experts last week.

Our tasks:

1. Read the symposium transcript.
2. Join together with colleagues to create a short, bold explanation of what is wrong with our current fragmented system: most expensive among wealthy nations, nonetheless falling far short of providing high quality, affordable, equitable health care to everyone. And why: Rife with financial incentives that undermine the mission of a health care system. And, how we can fix it: describe simply how the streamlined and generous approaches in single payer should appeal to everyone, regardless of political affiliation.
3. Join with other individual advocates and organizations to deliver that message to the public at large. Use all the communication tools available to us, just like an election campaign: in person, in traditional media, in social media.
4. Inspire the public to use all communication resources, including direct contact, to persuade our legislators that this is the reform that we need and that we demand.
5. Rejoice as our president responds to the will of the people by signing legislation enacting a single payer, improved version of Medicare that will provide affordable, equitable, comprehensive, high quality health care for absolutely everyone.

Of course, we (still) face an uphill battle. Yet we must preserve and pursue this vision. We must eventually break through the US inertia and conflicts of interest, with so many other countries showing the way of efficient, generous, and effective health care.