Category: Natl. Health Policy

  • A Brief History of Managed Healthcare: 1970 to present

    The January 1970 issue of Fortune magazine, which focused entirely on healthcare issues and solutions, coincided with a time when healthcare spending was 7% of GDP. As an associate at McKinsey & Company during that period, I was inspired by this issue and by a subsequent meeting with Dr. Paul Ellwood to dedicate my professional…

  • The Better Care Plan: a blueprint for improving America’s healthcare system 

    Stephen M Shortell, , John S Toussaint, , George C Halvorson, Jon M Kingsdale, Richard M Scheffler, Allyson Y Schwartz, Peter A Wadsworth, Gail Wilensky HealthAffairs Scholar 6/20/2023 Abstract The United States falls far short of its potential for delivering care that is effective, efficient, safe, timely, patient-centered, and equitable. We put forward the Better Care Plan, an overarching blueprint to…

  • Publicly Reported Health Outcomes: A National Initiative To Improve Care

    Peter A. Wadsworth,  Stephen M. Shortell,  John S. Toussaint (Health Affairs Forefront 7/19/22) In this article, we describe the rationale and design criteria for a public-private approach to improving the quality and value of health care in the United States: a Publicly Reported Health Outcomes (PRHO) program. This long-term, aspirational initiative, focused on results and…

  • The Better Care Plan Advantage

    Peter A. Wadsworth (LinkedIn 12/11/2020) The Better Care Plan is a national health strategy to improve the affordability of health coverage and the quality of care received by Americans. It was developed by these eight senior healthcare executives, economists, and health policy researchers. Conclusions Medicare Advantage plans currently outperform Medicare fee-for-service (Parts A, B and…

  • Medicare-for-All Part II: A Risk Assessment

    Medicare-for-All Part II: A Risk assessment published on LinkedIn August 30, 2019. There are substantial obstacles to MFA becoming law, which render MFA a high-risk proposition that could crowd out more moderate legislative proposals, include: Elimination of Private Health Insurance (Sec. 107), an industry that represents more than 6 % of our Gross Domestic Product. The Freedom…

  • Medicare-for-All Part III: Assessing the Alternatives published

    This article compares Medicare-for-All with several alternatives including a public option, Medicare Extra for All, the Healthy America Program (revised) and Medicare Advantage for All using six criteria, such as universality of coverage, affordability, per capita costs and implementation time-frame. It concludes with seven recommendations, most notably nationalization of Medicaid and substantial changes to the…