"A Time for Change: the Obama Agenda"-Medical Money
Thursday, January 15, 2009SUSIE GHARIB: President-elect Barack Obama has achieved his first legislative victory five days before being sworn in. Late today the Senate approved the release of $350 billion in unspent financial bailout funds. Obama asked for the money just two days ago. He wants to use it to unclog the credit markets and get money to consumers and small businesses. Also on Capitol Hill today, top House Democrats unveiled a $825 billion economic stimulus plan. The long-awaited proposal would combine $550 billion in emergency spending with $275 billion in temporary tax cuts. The package includes spending on clean energy, education and infrastructure upgrades. It also contains funds to computerize health care records, a top priority for President-Elect Barack Obama. In part three of our series "A Time for Change: the Obama Agenda," Dana Bate reports that bringing down medical costs is also on the new administration's to-do list.
DANA BATE, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Obama and his team think using electronic medical records like these will help bring down medical costs. The president-elect has pledged to make all medical records digital within five years, investing $50 billion in health information technology to make it happen. Obama's pick for Health and Human Services secretary, former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle, says adopting health IT will make health care more efficient.
TOM DASCHLE, NOMINEE, HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: What we have found in system after system where IT, information technology, has been tried, is that we reduce the errors. We reduce the duplication and we speed up the process immensely.
BATE: Daschle says that could cut hospital administration costs in half. But implementing high quality IT systems is complicated and they come with a hefty price tag: $20,000 to $25,000 per doctor. Former Medicare Director Mark McClellan says when it comes to promoting efficiency in our health care system, the current incentive structure is out of whack.
MARK MCCLELLAN DIRECTOR, DIR., ENGELBERG CTR. FOR HEALTH CARE REFORM, BROOKINGS: For most physicians in practice today, the steps that they try to take to improve care, to spend more time with their patients on education, to adopt electronic records and use it to manage chronic disease effectively, they don't get paid for that. They get paid less under our current payment rules.
BATE: That's one reason why Daschle wants to set up a Federal health board. Think of it as a Federal Reserve for health care, independent medical experts who would research which drugs, devices and treatments are most effective. Health care expert Marilyn Moon says that would pinpoint what Federal health programs and insurers should pay for.
MARILYN MOON, HEALTH PGM DIR., AMERICAN INSTITUTES FOR RESEARCH: If we find for example, that a particular kind of knee surgery doesn't help arthritis, then we should simply not cover it. We don't outlaw it, but we don't cover it. We don't pay for it because the data say very clearly that this should not be done.
BATE: But many experts caution simply squeezing down costs won't give Americans better health care. McClellan said the focus should be getting more bang for our health care buck.
MCCLELLAN: I think by putting more of an emphasis on getting quality right on, delivering better value in healthcare, we can actually do a much better job, at least over the medium and long term, of bringing down health care spending growth.
BATE: The U.S. now spends more than any other country on health care. But we're ranked only 37th in quality of care. Moon says that shows spending more money doesn't always produce better results.
MOON: We're going to have to start changing our culture. More is not always better in health care, but that's been true for so long. You know, do everything on me you can do, doc, to find out what's wrong with me. And that's not always the right way to do it.
BATE: That culture change touches on another tool Obama hopes to use to cut medical costs: you and me. The incoming administration has emphasized a new role for personal responsibility: taking care of ourselves, so that we can avoid preventable and potentially costly illnesses. Dana Bate, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Washington .
