Rising Health Costs Prompt New Groups To Discuss Reform of U.S. Health System

The Dec. 17 Wall Street Journal reports that amid escalating health costs, several new organizations are "cropping up, intent on rekindling serious discussions over the future of the health care system and on coming up with workable solutions to its refractory problems." These organizations are modeled in part on the Jackson Hole Group, an "informal group of health policy experts, corporate executives, physicians and hospital leaders" that met regularly in the early 1990s to "swap ideas" on how to "reinvent" the U.S. health care system. Jackson Hole was responsible for "coin[ing] the term "managed competition" and offering "the intellectual underpinnings for much of the national debate over the Clinton administration's health reform package," the Journal reports. However, after Congress "killed the plan, interest in health powwows waned" and Jackson Hole stopped meeting. Nearly a decade later, the "growing discontent" with the U.S. health care system and "concern over the resurgence of medical inflation" have given rise to the new groups, which are "composed largely of private-sector health care leaders." Brian Klepper, a health care consultant in Jacksonville, Fla., and head of the Center for Practical Health Reform, said, "Health care is in the process of literally pricing itself out of the market for many Americans." His group, which includes 30 leaders of hospital and managed care organizations, recently adopted 10 principles that they believe are necessary for health reform. The number one principle is to "assur[e] basic insurance coverage for all Americans," while others include using scientific evidence in medical decisions and greater individual responsibility over health care. The Journal reports that other groups with "similar agendas" include:

• The Wye River Group on Healthcare, based in Austin, Texas, which recently released a report on "patient-directed health benefits";
• The American Health Initiative, based in New York, which is focusing on access and quality issues; and
• The Alliance for Health Care Integrity, based in Corona, Calif., which "aim[s] to restor[e] trust" in the health care industry.

Will Action Follow?
Each group, the Journal reports, plans to "sponsor discussions" that will "build a broad consensus for their ideas -- a crucial prerequisite, they believe, to any legislative proposals." Paul Ellwood, founder of the Jackson Hole Group and inventor of the term health maintenance organization, "fondly refers" to the new groups as "Jackson Hole knockoffs," but "caution[ed] that translating ideas into action" is difficult. "I've really been chastened by the direction health care has taken that has proven to be so intractable to change," he said (Winslow, Wall Street Journal, 12/17).