How Haven Failed at Repairing America’s Healthcare System. The reason that healthcare and associated costs for medical treatment are so high is the way pricing is established, managed care. Making healthcare more affordable and accessible was what Haven was supposed to do. Its failure to address how prices are kept artificially high via managed care was among its biggest failures.
The lessons available from this epic ‘bellyflop’ are the subject of the latest Houston Healthcare Initiative podcast, hosted by respected Houston based neurologist Dr. Steven Goldstein. The Houston Healthcare Initiative podcast can be heard on: SoundCloud, Radio.com, Spotify, ListenNotes, iHeartRadio, Podcast Addict, Stitcher, BackTracks,PlayerFM, and the Houston Healthcare Initiative web site.
Resource Rich but Still A Bust
Haven was a joint venture between Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan-Chase. Its purpose was to use the leverage of its tens of thousands of employees and its expertise in technology to improve the healthcare system.
Managed Care Keeps Prices High
Haven worked at the edges of what really made medicine expensive and avoided the fundamental challenge of the managed care model. “We need a system that enables hospital systems to profit from the improved health of the population rather than the amount of ‘sick care’ delivered,” Dr. Goldstein told his podcast audience. “Innovative ideas need to focus first on improving health. The only way for this to happen is for hospital systems to profit from this outcome.”
How?
One example of how to accomplish this, is for hospitals to offer Medicare pricing to patients without insurance at Medicare rates. In return for the discounted prices, patients would pay the hospital a monthly fee. They would also pay a monthly fee into a savings account in order to pay the hospital bill. In this scenario, the hospital would collect the monthly fee even if no patients were admitted to hospital. If patients were kept well, the need for hospitalizations would decrease. “In this environment, the innovative ideas of Haven would have found a much warmer reception,” Dr. Goldstein said.
No Reason for Change or New Ideas
Haven also failed to understand why the medical business was not interested in new, innovative ways to provide and charge for medicine. The reasons were simple. Insurance companies and providers make lots of money from the current way of doing things,” Dr. Goldstein said. “There are few enticements for them to change and why should they when money is pouring in and there is no pressure to do things differently.”
Thanks, But No
Would the ‘industry’ be open to creative ideas and problem solving when it comes to pricing, service delivery or an emphasis on making the public healthy and not just treating illness? “Probably not,” Dr. Goldstein reported. “The current system of managed care frowns on innovation. It controls innovation by only paying for services that have codes. It likes to use words like usual and customary. Medicine lags behind the tech world by approximately 25 years. So no, in a change averse industry I would not look for any creative approaches to take place except over long periods of time.”
About Dr. Steven Goldstein and the Houston Healthcare Initiative
The Houston Healthcare Initiative (HHI) was founded by respected, Houston neurologist Dr. Steven Goldstein. Like many Americans, Dr. Goldstein is concerned about the state of the U.S healthcare system and the sorry state of the public’s health. The Houston Healthcare Initiative web site is an aggregator of news, healthcare pricing information, and resources for those who want to help drive reform for the healthcare industry. HHI’s emphasis for reform is on free market innovation and personal responsibility.
The goal of the Houston Healthcare Initiative is to be a catalyst for change in the way Americans receive and pay for medical treatment. To cause change the site aggregates information, tools, and targets for the reform of the healthcare industry with an emphasis on free market innovation and personal responsibility.