Thursday, November 02, 2006

Getting up to speed on health care reform

Dr. Mike Magee has an excellent blog on his Health Politics website where he ably discusses topics related to the current and future U.S. health care system. He also has a series of podcasts which are extremely well done and informative.

For instance, one of these discussed the history of our health care system and how it came to be mostly employer funded. Nevertheless, I want to mention the one entitled "Building Tomorrow's Health Care" which touches on the coming transformation of the U.S. National Health Care system. Dr. Magee specifies two characteristics of the coming transformation, mentioning that it will be:

1) Home Centered - Educational Empowerment and behavior modification.
2) Influenced by Information Technology - communication between patients and caregivers.

What's interesting according to Dr. Magee is that the typical power players (e.g., insurance companies, hospitals, etc.) are not calling all the shots. Non-traditional players could play a very strong role in the future. These include:

1) Technology Firms - Intel, Phillips
2) Banks - Offering Health Savings Accounts (HSA)
3) Governmental municipalities - San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston

Hope you tune into this website, podcast, blog and let me know what you think.

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