HHS Secretary Leavitt Says Public Data On Costs, Quality Needed To Contain Health Care Costs

Main Category: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Article Date: 25 Feb 2008 - 8:00 PDT

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Speaking in Salt Lake City on Thursday, HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said that publicly releasing cost and quality data about medical providers would drive down health care costs while improving quality, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. Leavitt said that the U.S. might lose its competitive edge in the world marketplace if health care costs are not contained. According to Leavitt, costs can be contained in part by empowering residents to make health care choices based on quality and cost decisions, and the government must organize a marketplace in which this can occur. He said, "You literally can't solve the problem of the uninsured without dealing with the cost," adding, "It would be an easy solution to explain if we just had the government buy health insurance for everyone, but it wouldn't necessarily solve the cost problem."

Leavitt was in Salt Lake City to announce the Utah Partnership for Value-Driven Care as a "chartered value exchange," meaning that it will be able to combine CMS quality data with information from the private sector to gauge the level of quality care in the state. The partnership is a coalition of providers, public health agencies, hospitals and health insurers focused on improving the availability and accuracy of health data (Rosetta, Salt Lake Tribune, 2/22).

Opinion Piece
"If there is a silver lining to be found amid the darkening fiscal clouds" announced in the Medicare trustees' financial projections for the program, "it lies in statutory provisions that ensure that proposals to curb Medicare spending will live to see the light of a fair vote in Congress," Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), chair of the Republican Study Committee, writes in a Washington Times opinion piece. President Bush's budget proposal -- which would limit Medicare growth to 5% annually, rather than the 7.2% rate that has been projected -- is a "good first step toward Medicare reform" because it utilizes "one of the keys to true Medicare reform: ensuring that budgetary savings derive from wise choices by patients and doctors about the most cost-effective treatment options," Hensarling writes.

Hensarling continues, "The president's proposals have advanced the discussion of Medicare reform, and the trigger mechanism which we instituted five years ago provides Congress with a golden opportunity to conduct a thorough, stem-to-stern review of the way seniors receive health care and ensure that we can maintain our promises to baby boomers and future retirees alike" (Hensarling, Washington Times, 2/22).

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