by
Apr 17, 2019
The opening remarks from Gary West, Founder of West Health, and Tim Lash, West Health’s Chief Strategy Officer, did not mince words. Both contended that the current state of healthcare in the U.S. delivers too little quality care at too high a cost and that waiting for the politicians in Washington to deliver us from this healthcare crisis is not a viable strategy. They laid out their three “Common Sense Solutions” to the problem:
- • End Fee-For-Service reimbursement and move to value-based care;
- • Empower Medicare with the right to directly negotiate drug pricing; and
- • Implement transparency in healthcare pricing
Former Administrator of the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services Andy Slavitt went on in his remarks to identify what he termed the “Triple Threat to the Triple Aim,” a reference to the lexicon commonly used to describe the main tenets of the Affordable Care Act – improving the patient care experience, improving the health of patient populations, and reducing costs. Slavitt contends that the biggest threats to high quality, low-cost healthcare in the U.S. include:
- • Inequality and health disparities;
- • “Revenue-thinking” as an all-consuming single-aim; and
- • Politics and the politicization of healthcare
