Health Care Cost Quote of the Day

The Health Care Blog interviewed Jon Kingsdale, executive director of the Massachusetts Connector, one of the entities created as a result of Massachusetts’ health insurance reforms. That interview includes a response I mostly agree with and want to highlight for others:

I think that the cost issue is going to come bubbling up in a way that’s never happened before, as a result of this reform. The problem we have now in this country is we have two separate dialogs that go on. It’s sort of like the authorization and the appropriations process. On the one hand, the dialog at cocktail parties or in the press or public meetings about: “My doctor’s great,” “This hospital screwed up,” “Isn’t it great they can now replace my hips with artificial hips, and I can walk again?” And then you have this conversation about affordability and cost, and how outrageously expensive it is. And those two conversations go on separately. We’re actually going to bring them together. And by bringing everybody in to health insurance, we’re going to then focus the public dialog on the trade-offs that are required, whether it’s deductibles or aggressive pharmacy management or limited networks or other items, to try to bridge that gap between what you can afford, and what you want, and what you need. Maybe everybody won’t get exactly what they want; they will get what they need at a price that they decide for themselves is affordable. And I think that’s going to have a tremendous impact on competition in the market.

I don’t necessarily agree with the idea that mandating health insurance for everybody is the right way to achieve such a debate. However, I agree that that debate needs to happen, preferably sooner rather than later.