February 5th, 2008
Walker's four point health reform plan
David Walker, the nation’s Comptroller General (right) offered a four-point plan for our health care system in recent Senate testimony.
Walker is one of the few government officials you might consider bias-free, because the Comptroller General serves a single 15-year term.
In other words, Walker is a Clinton appointee approved by a Republican Congress. He will serve through the next Presidential term.
Walker has been in the job so long, his resume proudly trumpets his work at Arthur Andersen, which got the corporate death penalty in the Enron scandal — after his time and he was in the Atlanta office.
Anyway, Walker’s proposal has four parts, as summarized by the Kansas City Star:
- Provide universal access to basic and essential health care.
- Impose limits on federal spending for health care.
- Implement national, evidence-based medical practice standards to improve quality, control costs and reduce litigation.
- Make Americans assume more personal responsibility for their health.
The first proposal puts him in the Democratic mainstream. The second may make him sound like a Republican. The third proposal gets us back to that comparative effectiveness debate we’ve been having. The fourth is really an aspiration.
My guess is these are going to be the parameters around which the real health care debate will be joined next year, regardless of who is elected, or which party controls Congress. Walker is trying to describe a consensus position.
Has he got it right?
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
Subscribe to ZDNet Healthcare via Email alerts or RSS.
| 02/08/08
