As an economist, Peter Orszag is adamant that health care reform plays a major role in stabilizing America’s economy to be sustainable for future generations. When Orszag worked in the White House as the director of both the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget, he had a nonpartisan influence on the decisions made and bills created regarding health care reform.
Orszag approaches health care reform from many angles—not just by suggesting spending cuts or increased taxation. Rather, Orszag emphasizes that the way health care systems work internally (i.e. hospitals and doctors) must undergo an overhaul, along with the government programs like Medicare.
Also worth considering is how an overhaul of Americans’ lifestyle would decrease health care spending significantly. Simply living healthier lifestyles as a means of preventative care would save millions of dollars each year. Orszag, an avid runner with a focus on proper nutrition, is an example of this philosophy.
Here are a few points in health care reform efforts:
- Malpractice laws: Orszag has written in The New York Times about malpractice lawsuits driving up costs significantly. Why? Doctors must perform extraneous, unnecessary testing to cover themselves from lawsuits. As a possible solution, lawmakers could protect doctors from these lawsuits, as long as they have followed evidence-based guidelines in treating patients to the best of their abilities, instead of performing costly and ineffective testing to simply protect themselves from a malpractice lawsuit.
- Efficiency in containing costs and improving quality of care: Some basic examples of this include penalizing hospitals with high readmission rates and infections developed in-hospital and enabling a single payment to treat a condition versus multiple payments for each treatment. There would be incentives for health care providers to emphasize quality of care to save money and help patients.
- Medicare reform: An Independent Payment Advisory Board comprised of medical experts would discover ways to improve Medicare’s cost-effectiveness under the Health Care Act.
The ultimate goals in health care reform are to provide coverage to all Americans, lower costs, and increase quality. In combination with more awareness of healthy lifestyles, costs could be driven down significantly, while saving government programs like Medicare.