Fork in the road: alternative paths to a high performance U.S. health system

Fork in the road: alternative paths to a high performance U.S. health system

Collection:
Health Policy and Services Research
Contributor(s):
Schoen, Cathy
Davis, Karen.
Guterman, Stuart.
Stremikis, Kristof.
Commonwealth Fund.
Publication:
New York, NY : Commonwealth Fund, [2009]
Language(s):
English
Format:
Text
Subject(s):
Health Care Reform -- economics
Health Care Reform -- legislation & jurisprudence
National Health Insurance, United States -- economics
National Health Insurance, United States -- legislation & jurisprudence
Quality Assurance, Health Care -- organization & administration
United States
Genre(s):
Technical Report
Abstract:
A controversial part of the health reform debate is whether a new public insurance plan choice should be offered to the under-65 population. This report analyzes alternative paths to reform and presents estimates of impacts on health spending. The approaches include: 1) a public health plan paying providers at Medicare rates, offered alongside private plans in a national health insurance exchange; 2) a public plan paying providers at rates set midway between Medicare and private plan rates, offered alongside private plans in an insurance exchange; and 3) no public plan, with only private plans offered to employers and individuals through an insurance exchange. All three approaches, if combined with Medicare payment and system reform, would produce substantial savings over time, but option 1 would yield the most--$3.0 trillion in cumulative health system savings over 2010 to 2020, compared with $2.0 trillion (option 2) and $1.2 trillion (option 3).
Copyright:
Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY license. (More information)
Illustrations:
Illustrations
NLM Unique ID:
101529525 (See catalog record)
Permanent Link:
http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/101529525