Johns Hopkins University president William Brody, in a speech at the National Press Club on Friday, said journalists are not asking presidential candidates the right questions about health care reform.
âIf youâre only reporting cost and coverage issues, youâre missing a big part of the story,â? Brody said.
Brody said that almost no one — candidates or reporters — is addressing equally essential elements of the health care puzzle: the quality and consistency of care; the complexity of medical practice today; and the role of chronic disease, the treatment of which threatens to monopolize health care resources. These âthree Câsâ? of health care — consistency, complexity and chronic disease — need to be front and center in any reform efforts, Brody said.
âThe fact is, cost and coverage solutions alone will not solve our problems,â? Brody said. âWe canât provide health insurance for all unless we control the spiraling costs of health care. But we wonât control costs until we deal with these other issues.â?
Brody said he will help get the right questions on the table by participating in a planned series of televised conversations with presidential candidates. Brody said that Johns Hopkins is working with the nationally distributed Retirement Living TV network and the National Coalition on Health Care to produce and air Presidential Spotlight on Healthcare â08: Which Way Forward? during the primary season. In half-hour discussions, Brody will provide the presidential candidates a platform to explain their health care proposals in terms that address all age groups of Americans.
Brody urged reporters and voters to question presidential candidates closely on how they propose to bring rationality and order to what he described as the industrialized worldâs most inefficient medical system.
âAt The Johns Hopkins Hospital, we have to bill more than 700 different payers/insurers, such as HMOs, PPOs, Medicare and Medicaid,â? he said. âEach one has its own set of rules regarding what services are covered, the level of reimbursement, and what kind of documentation and pre-approval is required. Nationally, this kind of inefficiency costs patients billions of dollars every year.â?
Comments
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Comments are closed.
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like