Matt Miller: Can CEOs lead on health care reform?

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MATT MILLER THE NEW YORK TIMES
Can CEOs lead on health care reform?

May 19, 2005

The consuming Senate slugfest over judges (vital as they are) proves how Washington remains determined to fiddle while our biggest problem burns: a broken health care system that threatens working families and national competitiveness.

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Is there hope? Maybe. But only if America's chief executives exercise their "nuclear option." Here's the logic. Washington will offer zero leadership on health reform until 2009. The only way we'll get serious then is if the campaign in 2008 centers on health. The only way that will happen is if groundwork is laid in advance. And the only way this groundwork will get traction is if America's CEOs make it their mission.

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So what should the chief executives do? Even if we don't have presidential leadership now, we desperately need the "presidential perspective." By this I mean a view of our challenges that doesn't reflect the narrow agenda of business or labor, or the medical-industrial complex. Instead, we need a "big picture" framework, a way to engage the press and the public in the right strategic goals.

Here's my version of the script: A dozen marquee CEOs would convene a "Manhattan Project"-style effort on the future of health care. They'd propose a new goal: instead of health costs rising from today's 15 percent of GDP to 20 percent by around 2020, as is now projected, the nation should shave 2 percent to 3 percentage points of GDP (or more) off projected growth in ways that improve quality, even as we extend coverage to the 45 million uninsured.


Our CEOs would add that a new health strategy would get excess costs off businesses' backs – costs that competitors don't face in countries where governments pick up the tab. It would re-engineer the delivery of care so governments would have cash left for other purposes. And it would cope with the political reality that every dollar of health care "waste" is somebody's dollar of income.

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