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Health
care leaders say need for reform is urgent
Majority of health care leaders support
public health care option, provider payment
reform, and a national insurance exchange
with standard-setting authority
New York, N.Y., July 27, 2009—By a wide
margin, health care leaders believe that
individuals should have a choice of public
and private health plans, and strongly
support other central components of health
reform such as innovative provider payment
reform and a national insurance health
exchange with strong standard-setting
authority.
In addition, two-thirds (68%) of opinion
leaders feel it is urgent to enact
comprehensive health care reform this year,
according to the latest Commonwealth
Fund/Modern Healthcare Health Care Opinion
Leaders Survey.
"These results show that leaders from all
the key stakeholder groups agree:
comprehensive health care reform is urgently
needed, to rein in costs and ensure that all
Americans have access to affordable quality
care," said Commonwealth Fund President
Karen Davis.
"Leaders
also agree that offering a range of
insurance options, and changing the way we
pay for health care are critical steps for
controlling the growth in health care
spending over the next decade."
Seven of 10 respondents to the survey,
conducted by Harris Interactive, support the
creation of a national health insurance
exchange with the authority to enforce
standards of participation by carriers,
standardize benefits, set rating rules, and
review or negotiate premiums.
Two-thirds (65%) say that the exchange
should offer a public plan that incorporates
innovative payment methods, moving away from
traditional fee-for-service and toward
bundled payments.
Half of opinion leaders (51%) support
setting provider payment rates in a public
insurance plan either at Medicare levels or
between Medicare and commercial plan levels.
Other findings from the survey include:
Fifty-six percent of respondents believe
that, in designing an individual mandate,
the required benefit package should be
similar to the standard BlueCross/BlueShield
option offered in the Federal Employees
Health Benefit Program.
In considering strategies to reduce health
costs, opinion leaders express substantial
support for new insurance reporting
requirements (78%), joint negotiation of
pharmaceutical prices (72%) and provider
payment rates (61%), and limits to high cost
providers and overvalued services (71%).
Forty-five percent of respondents believe
provider participation in the public plan
should be linked to Medicare, while 43
percent believe it should not, with the
strongest opposition among those working in
health care delivery.
Nearly three quarters of opinion leaders
(72%) support ending the two-year Medicare
waiting period for the disabled.
When asked to indicate their support for a
variety of approaches to financing coverage
expansion, more than three-fourths of survey
respondents (79%) support increasing the
federal excise tax on alcohol, cigarettes,
and sugar-sweetened drinks, and 77% support
requiring employers to offer coverage or pay
a percentage of payroll to finance coverage
(pay or play).
###
The survey is the 19th in a series from The
Commonwealth Fund, and the eleventh
conducted in partnership with the
publication Modern Healthcare. Commentaries
on the survey results by Congresswoman Tammy
Baldwin (D-WI) and Congressman Michael C.
Burgess (R-TX) appear in the July 27 issue
of Modern Healthcare. The commentaries are
also posted on the Fund's Web site,
www.commonwealthfund.org, along
with a Commission data brief discussing the
survey findings.
Methodology: The Commonwealth Fund/Modern
HealthCare Health Care Opinion Leaders
Survey was conducted online within the
United States by Harris Interactive on
behalf of The Commonwealth Fund between June
8, 2009 and July 8, 2009 among 585 opinion
leaders in health policy and innovators in
health care delivery and finance. The final
sample included 208 respondents from various
industries, for a response rate of 35.6
percent. Data from this survey were not
weighted. A full methodology is available in
Appendix A.
The Commonwealth Fund is a private
foundation supporting independent research
on health policy reform and a high
performance health system.
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