'Efficient Physicians' Key To VEBA Success, Opinion Piece States

Main Category: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Also Included In: Seniors / Aging;  Primary Care / General Practice
Article Date: 22 Nov 2007 - 8:00 PDT

email to a friend   printer friendly   view / write opinions   rate article

The Big Three automakers -- Ford Motor, General Motors and Chrysler Group -- in one of the "slickest sets of contract negotiations in the history of the Detroit-based auto industry" have shifted their retiree health care liabilities to United Auto Workers through establishing a voluntary employees' beneficiary association, Mitchell Seltzer, president and CEO of health care consulting and planning firm Seltzer Rees, writes in a Detroit Free Press opinion piece. He adds, "So how does the UAW do what GM, Ford and Chrysler couldn't do -- control the costs of health care that have increased at five times the rate of inflation since 2000?" Seltzer continues, "The answer is unexpected and straightforward: efficient physicians."

He cites data showing that 45% to 55% of hospitals' medical staff are efficient and that those providers use 20% to 30% fewer resources than other physicians. In addition, their patients "have shorter hospital stays, receive the known, current standards of care more reliably, are exposed to fewer hospital infections and errors, and fewer die," he writes. Seltzer concludes, "Someone has to use this knowledge to fix a system that has become increasingly unaffordable, unsafe, inaccessible and inequitable," adding, "It may be the calloused hands of American workers that become the healing hands for American health care" (Seltzer, Detroit Free Press, 11/21).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation© 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.