No doubt health care costs continue to reduce the bottom line of many small businesses. Even after pushing vendors hard and changine plans every few years, costs continue to climb and health outcomes measured by employee absenteeism and chronic ailments are stagnant or falling.
Like it or not, businesses will continue to be in the business of providing healthcare plans to employees for some time to come. Therefore, businesses need to look at different ways to “get their money’s worth” when it comes to healthcare.
Michael Porter, the Harvard Business School professor, suggests it is time for employers to think in terms of value and focus on better outcomes.

Porter suggests employers adopt four principles for providing healthcare to employees:
First, the best way truly to reduce health care cost is to improve its quality. Quality, defined in terms of outcomes, is the secret to success in health care.

Second, high-value care is delivered by integrated practice units including all the needed specialties that care for the patient’s medical condition over the full cycle of care.

Third, prevention and screening can dramatically improve value, as does ongoing disease management to prevent recurrences and setbacks.

Fourth, the only way truly to drive value is to measure patient outcomes for each medical condition.

What a relief. After 15 months of avoiding surgery to repair an increasing hierniation in my neck last week, Boulder Neurosurgery Association performed an Anterior cervical discectomy and fusion.

The outpatient procedure provided immediately relief to pain and numbness down my right arm into my thumb and forefinger.

or overstepping the boundaries of government? Which of these best describes the recent “Healthcare for All” bill supported by an overwhelming majority of the Massachusetts Legislature (154 to 2 in the House and 37 to 0 in the Senate) and Govenor Mitt Romney? The plan’s objective is one shared by all concerned about the unisured, responsible quality healthcare for all. It differs from many other universal plans in several ways.

The bill requires individuals to provide personal coverage, just like the state’s laws on auto coverage. Massachusetts is the first state requiring individuals to have health insurance or prove they can self-insure.

In addition, the bill provides funds to make sure those eligible for Medicare and Medicaid are enrolled. It subsidies healthcare insurance for those who don’t qualify for government programs and can’t afford insurance. The state expects to pay for the subsidies out of a $1 billion fund set aside for providing healthcare for those who can’t afford it.

The bill currently requires employers to pay $295 per unisured employee. “That’s likely to be adjusted by me,” stated Governor Romney. Will he wield the line-item veto pen?

Joe Klein at Time Magazine describes the Romney Healthcare plan this way:

Massachusetts now spends about $1 billion a year to provide emergency health care for at least 500,000 uninsured citizens. About 200,000 of those are young people, predominantly male, who are making enough money to buy health insurance but figure they don’t need it. They would be required to buy a relatively inexpensive health insurance policy, with higher deductibles and co-pays—that’s where the “mandate” comes in. Another 100,000 are extremely poor people who are eligible for Medicaid; a concerted effort would be made to bring them into the system. The remaining 200,000 are the people who have been most neglected by the system in the past: the working poor, people who have low-end service jobs or work part time for employers who don’t offer health coverage.

According to USA Today, Mass. Gov. Romney’s health care plan says everyone pays , other healthcare proposals have focused on expanding government healtcare coverage for the poor and have largely failed. Romney put distance between his proposal and the Clinton plan, saying “we don’t need Hillary-care.”

In an article by The Washington Post, Mass. Bill Requires Health Coverage, the plan goes much farther than any other state but is by no means finalized. It leaves the task of determining exactly how much some low-income residents will pay for their new, more affordable policies to a new agency that would serve as a liaison between the government, policyholders and private insurance companies.

Because of that uncertainty, some still worry that the residents required to buy insurance would not be able to.

In any event, a creative approach which does not unduly burden employers or tax payers. As long as it does not place too great a burden on the poor, then it is a very good start.

This posting by Kevin Brancato suggest that our view of healthcare cost in the US is distorted. While the data seems to lead to the conclusion that we’re buying much more healthcare at sky-high prices, economists doubt the validity and applicability of the offical data because it does not appropriately adjust for quality.

Technology Review unveils its annual selection of hot new technologies about to affect our lives in revolutionary ways—and profiles the innovators behind them.

Universal Translation
Synthetic Biology
Nanowires
Bayesian Machine Learning
T-Rays
Distributed Storage
RNA Interference
Power Grid Control
Microfluidic Optical Fibers
Personal Genomics