Even a marathon 2008 presidential campaign hasn't been
long enough for reporters to get
answers to key questions about the candidates' health care
proposals, Johns Hopkins University
President William R. Brody said
on Friday.
In fact, the news media aren't even asking the right
questions, he said.
Brody, speaking at the National Press Club in
Washington, urged reporters to push their health
care policy coverage beyond the obvious questions about the
price of health care and the availability
of insurance coverage.
"If you're only reporting cost and coverage issues,
you're missing a big part of the story," Brody
said.
Brody said that almost no one — candidates or
reporters — is addressing equally essential
elements of the health care puzzle: the quality and
consistency of care; the complexity of medical
practice today; and the role of chronic disease, the
treatment of which threatens to monopolize
health care resources. These "three C's" of health care
— consistency, complexity and chronic disease —
need to be front and center in any reform efforts, Brody
said.
"The fact is, cost and coverage solutions alone will
not solve our problems," Brody said. "We
can't provide health insurance for all unless we control
the spiraling costs of health care. But we won't
control costs until we deal with these other issues."
Brody said he will help get the right questions on the
table by participating in a planned series
of televised conversations with presidential candidates.
Johns Hopkins, he said, is working with the
nationally distributed Retirement Living TV network and the
National Coalition on Health Care to
produce and air Presidential Spotlight on Healthcare '08:
Which Way Forward? during the primary
season. In half-hour discussions, Brody will provide the
presidential candiates a platform to explain
their health care proposals in terms that address all age
groups of Americans.
According to Brad Knight, president of Retirement
Living TV, "More than 30 percent of voters
will be within retirement age on our next president's
watch, and there is nothing more important than
simplified electronic medical records and quality of
care."
Brody urged reporters and voters to question
presidential candidates closely on how they
propose to bring rationality and order to what he described
as the industrialized world's most
inefficient medical system.
"At The Johns Hopkins Hospital, we have to bill more
than 700 different payers/insurers, such
as HMOs, PPOs, Medicare and Medicaid," he said. "Each one
has its own set of rules regarding what
services are covered, the level of reimbursement and what
kind of documentation and pre-approval is
required. Nationally, this kind of inefficiency costs
patients billions of dollars every year."
Brody, a medical doctor and former radiologist in
chief at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, has been
president of The Johns Hopkins University since 1996. A
former provost of the Academic Health
Center at the University of Minnesota, Brody has also been
professor of radiology and of electrical
engineering at Stanford University and a co-founder of
three medical device companies. He was
president and chief executive officer of Resonex from 1984
to 1987.
For the full text of Brody's speech, go to:
web.jhu.edu/president/speeches/2007/health.html.
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