Posted by: David Morales, Commissioner, Division of Health Care Finance and Policy
This report presents short-term and long-term recommendations for mitigating the annual growth in health care costs in the Commonwealth. The identified strategies reflect both a candid assessment of what the Division learned from the its analysis of medical claims data, as well as the near-unanimous appeal from employers, consumers, providers, payers, and government leaders during the three-days of public hearings: taking action now to lower health care cost growth is an economic imperative.
This report lays out an action plan for policy makers. It recommends the use of temporary, short-term interventions to stem annual health care cost growth and to provide immediate and necessary relief to small businesses and working families. The report also recommends longer-term actions that will lower costs over time and transition the Massachusetts health care delivery system toward better integration and coordination of care.
Such a transition will require leadership and sustained commitment from all Massachusetts stakeholders – legislators, the Administration, consumers, employers, physicians, hospitals, and insurers – to achieve the kind of breakthrough that the Commonwealth accomplished in providing near universal access to health care coverage. This report establishes a framework for that effort – a comprehensive transformation of the Massachusetts health care system into one that is more integrated, patient-centered, efficient and economically sustainable.
To read the suite of publications related to the Massachusetts Health Care Cost Trends Final Report, including the executive summary, action plan, final report, and appendices, please visit www.mass.gov/dhcfp/costtrends.
The one thing in your recommendations that appears to be more than temporary or of a one-time benefit is the recommendation you call Integrated Care Organization (ICO). But isn't an ICO just an HMO as originally conceived in the 1970s?
The description in this report seems exactly like the Fallon Community Health Plan that I was sold in the early 1980s, that I paid for month after month for almost 30 years, and that delivered exactly what you describe in this report as something new. The original FCHP gave the primary care physician the key role, included all the other providers my family needed (and they appeared to us to be working collaboratively with the primary care physician), and provided access to St. Vincent's hospital when needed. How is what you're suggesting any different?
Assuming an ICO is the same thing as an HMO with a new acronym, I suggest you find out what went wrong at FCHP (and I assume also went wrong at the original Tufts health plan, Harvard health plan, etc.).
By the way, the FCHP I paid for for 30 years has been taken away from me, because of the state government's interference in the healthcare insurance/delivery process, now that I am in my sixties and likely to need the concept in more depth. I would like to make sure the same thing does not happen to my children and grandchildren 25 and 50 years from now.
Posted by: Dennis Byron | May 05, 2010 at 04:49 AM