I am not in marketing for Kaiser, but you folks might find this interesting. It's an email from the Kaiser CEO to employees. Obviously Kaiser Hawaii needs improvement, both in patient care and affordability, but I think there are some issues that only an organization like Kaiser can address quickly. This is not a simple issue in this country.
Quoted without permission:
Dear KP colleague:
We are about to finish a very interesting year for health care policy in America. Health care reform was a very real part of our year – with books, articles, papers, seminars, educational programs, speeches, direct consultations and advice to multiple audiences and constituencies about how America (and California) could and should achieve universal coverage for all citizens.
The process started with a press conference in Washington, DC, just after the last election to announce a new industry-wide agenda for both reform and universal coverage. I had the honor of presenting that position and proposal to the American news media and policy leaders at a press conference in Washington, DC, as one of three speakers urging America to cover everyone in the country.
The reaction was basically very positive. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said, “I strongly commend the leaders of the nation's health insurers for their proposal to help ensure every American has access to health care coverage.” The Wall Street Journal called the proposal “genuinely innovative.” The proposal signaled a new and more positive initiative for plans – with some of the same organizations that had resisted reform in the Clinton years now signing on as proponents of reform.
Kaiser Permanente kept on that same collaborative pathway to reform all year – working hard to persuade our lawmakers, opinion leaders and policy community that health care reform was long overdue. One of our major goals was to help make the debate as well informed as we could make it. We sponsored a special seminar in Washington, DC, in October, for example, inviting two of our sister health plan leaders from Switzerland and the Netherlands to explain to Washington, DC, thought leaders that most nations in Europe actually achieve complete universal coverage for all of their citizens using health plans. Contrary to popular belief, almost no one in Europe uses the pure government-run, single-payer model that Canada uses. Private health plans play a major role in achieving universal coverage in Europe. Many Washington, DC, health policymakers did not know that to be true – so we brought the leaders of actual highly successful health plans from Europe to Washington to be grilled and examined by congressional staff, journalists, and American policy experts.
The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times all came to our two-hour pre-talk prep session to meet the health plan leaders from Europe. Articles and learning resulted. You can read a brief Congressional Quarterly (CQ Health Beat) summary of our meeting at:
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/healthpo...#doc574935
If you have had the chance to look through my latest book, Health Care Reform Now!, you know that I describe a couple of those European plans in that book. Those competing health plans play a huge role in European health care and most people in this country do not know that they even exist. Our policymakers will, I believe, not be able to design a good pathway to universal coverage for all Americans by being ignorant of successful approaches used by other countries.
I mention that whole topic in this letter in part because quite a few of our employees have asked me whether universal coverage in America will help or hurt Kaiser Permanente. Some of our staff members have had real concerns on that point. So what is the answer? If the U.S. were to adopt universal coverage approaches similar to those used by Germany, Switzerland, Belgium or the Netherlands, universal coverage here could give Kaiser Permanente a chance to both shine and thrive.
The devil is in the details, however. Some forms of universal coverage would let us function as a coherent, patient-focused care system to do outstanding work. Other approaches to universal health care could hurt our ability to serve our members and patients.
One of the reasons that we are so active in helping encourage health care reform is that we believe public policy in this country should promote coordinated, outcomes-focused, patient-centered care – rather than encourage and even require piecemeal rationing of care in the context of a bureaucratic, incident-centered, perversely incented, splintered, and fractionalized non-system of care.
Part of our challenge and our opportunity right now as an organization is to be both a valuable resource for that whole health care reform debate, and to be a model for how care ought to be delivered. No one in the world can do what we do with systems, data, caregiver linkages, caregiver coordination, and patient-centered care. Because our capabilities are so unique, we owe it to the world to realize our capabilities, to demonstrate our success, and then to set the new standard for what is possible for health care providers to do relative to improving the health of the members and patients we serve.
So health care reform has been very high on our agenda for 2007, and I am celebrating this week the incredible team of policy people we have on our staff representing us in Washington, DC, in the various state capitals, and with the various regulatory agencies who oversee our operations. Our team is making a difference every day. I have never worked with a team as bright, capable, competent, credible and committed as the group we currently have representing Kaiser Permanente in each of those settings.
So this week, I am celebrating that health care and health policy reform team and also pointing 2008 at Kaiser Permanente to the next level of reform -- operational, political, logistical and programmatic reform that can impact care and coverage all over the world.
Our team has done great work in 2007, and we need it to keep that train rolling in 2008.
I also want to thank all of our total team at Kaiser Permanente for another stellar year. Thank you to everyone reading this letter. We had a very good year. We had some major performance successes. We moved our cost trend down to help keep care more affordable for our members. We improved care quality, improved our communications reach, improved service, and laid the track for the levels of performance we will need in 2008 and beyond – in an increasingly competitive health care world. We made progress in 2007.
A lot of people worked very hard. I thank you all.
Have a great 2008.
Be well.
George
For additional information:
“European Health Care--No Longer an Epithet?” by John Reichard, (Congressional Quarterly) CQ HealthBeat Editor, October 31, 2007:
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/healthpo...#doc574935
“It’s time to give health care to all,” by George Halvorson, Sacramento Bee, September 14, 2007:
