New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg today called for a restructuring of how the United States pays for health care services in an address at the Academy Health National Health Policy Conference in Washington, D.C. In his prepared remarks, Bloomberg argued that the deepest failing of the current health care system is its emphasis on expensive treatments over preventive care that can be cheaper and often more effective. Bloomberg focused on the need for more widespread use of health information technology to support preventive care and reform health care financing.
"We've got a health care system that's not only breaking the bank, and not only leaving one out of six Americans uninsured, but which also provides decidedly ineffective care," said Bloomberg. "We have the most expensive and most advanced health care system in the world, yet we lag on such basic measures as life expectancy, and we fail to prevent death and disability for millions of Americans with common conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes."
Bloomberg told conference participants that universal health insurance alone won't automatically lead to the health improvements, saying that, "We're paying for a disease care system, not a health care system. We must fundamentally reorder our priorities -- and start rewarding the primary and preventive care that keeps people out of hospitals in the first place."
Bloomberg spoke about the importance of information technology in health care and the role it can play in preventive care, detailing the successes that the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and the United States Department of Veterans Affairs have had implementing Electronic Health Records systems. To speed the pace of change, Bloomberg called for a new national goal: five years from today, every doctor's office, clinic, and hospital in America that accepts Medicaid and Medicare must be using prevention-oriented Electronic Health Records. Electronic Health Records, he said, will allow private insurers and Medicare and Medicaid to make meaningful measurements of physicians' performance, help them improve it, and recognize and reward them when they do.
"Today, most businesses, down to the smallest corner grocery store, have better information about their sales and inventories than even affluent medical practices have about their patients," Bloomberg said.
