Liberal Democracy

Liberal Democracy
The Free State

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Forbes Magazine: Jim Yong Kim- 'The Next Phase of Health Care Reform: Providing Low Cost, High Quality Medical Care'


Source:Forbes Magazine- Jim Yong Kim: President of Dartmouth College.

"To save costs, we need to fix the delivery system says Dartmouth College President Jim Yong Kim.  And he's got a plan to do just that." 

From Forbes Magazine

The 2010 Affordable Care Act wasn't about healthcare reform in general, but about health insurance expansion. And regulating the private health insurance industry with a Patients Bill of Rights. And these things will help bring down our healthcare costs with everybody contributing to their own healthcare costs. As well as some reforms in Medicare and some other reforms in Medicaid. Which were less positive because it made millions of more people eligible for Medicaid. But without paying for it leaving the bill to the states which they aren't going to like. 

So the first round of healthcare reform (as I call it) was about health insurance expansion and regulation. Not so much about bringing down our long term healthcare costs. And that gets to things like expanding healthcare, more hospitals and clinics, taking better care of ourselves as a country, so we don't have to consume as much healthcare in the future and only getting Healthcare that we actually need to stay healthy and survive. And discourage things that are more on the luxury side of healthcare, like certain plastic surgery's, massages, that sort of thing.