A mantra for true health care reform

My takeaway from T.R. Reid's comparative look at national health care systems, The Healing of America, is distilled in this mantra from former British health minister John Reid:

We cover everybody, but not everything (p. 221).

That is the key to equitable, effective, sustainable health care delivery. As (T.R.) Reid's tour of successful health care systems makes clear, the very different systems at work in France, Germany and Japan (which channel payment through private but nonprofit insurers), Canada (single payer, Medicare model) and Britain (direct government funding) share these three elements:

1. Everybody has the same access to the same treatment
2. Every provider of each treatment (or of each patient, in a capitated system) gets the same pay as every other provider of that treatment.
3. One entity sets all treatment prices for the whole nation (or province, in Canada's case).

Establishing these conditions doesn't make cost control easy. It just makes it possible.

The health care reform bills pending in the U.S. won't create these conditions in one fell swoop. At best, they will establish adequate minimum insurance coverage standards and create viable nonprofit alternatives to the for-profit industry. Then, if we're lucky, those nonprofit options will indeed kill off for-profit insurance, exactly as AHIP fears.