John McCain Joins the Health Plan Debate

Well, somebody did his homework! Just a day after submitting my blog about the Milken Institute’s report, “An Unhealthy America: The Economic Burden of Chronic Disease,” I read that Senator John McCain has unveiled a health plan that emphasizes cutting costs by offering prevention and wellness incentives to both doctors and patients.

McCain’s plan is unique because its main focus is not just to provide medical coverage to the 40 million Americans without health insurance (see plans put forth by Democratic candidates).  Dan L. Crippen, domestic policy adviser for the McCain campaign, calls the uninsured “a symptom of a larger problem.”

Nor is it simply an argument for free market competition over mandated health coverage (see plans put forth by fellow Republican candidates).  Rather, McCain’s plan insists that curbing spending should be the central focus of any health care overhaul.  And he says the way to achieve this is to demand “accountability from everyone: drug companies, insurance companies, doctors, hospitals, the government and the patients.”

Sure to be one of his most controversial ideas, McCain believes that hospital and physician compensation should be based on overall performance and results.  “We should pay a single bill for high-quality health care, not an endless series of bills for surgical tests and visits, hospitalization and surgery, and follow-up tests, drugs and office visits,” McCain said when revealing his plan in Iowa. 

But perhaps his best idea – at once the most obvious and also the most elusive – is that of patient accountability. “Has any candidate warned that we have a personal responsibility to take better care of ourselves and our children?” McCain asked.  “Yet that is the only way to prevent many chronic diseases.”

So there you have it: if you don’t want to spend a lot of money on health care, you should get healthy and stay healthy!  If only it was that simple….