Hold the Mayo

For those of you keeping score, it appears the Mayo Clinic isn't sold on the idea of a public health option.

Dr. Douglas Wood, who chairs the clinic's division of Health Care Policy & Research, said a public plan modeled after the Medicare system has the potential to do serious harm to health care in states like Minnesota where quality is high and costs are low.

"If it's a government-run plan with government price controls, that could be highly detrimental to states like Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and all across the northern tier of the United States," Wood said.

Government price controls. That's exactly what Medicaid & Medicare do. Limit how much a provider will receive for a particular procedure.

As the health care debate ramps up, so have the efforts of the Mayo Clinic's Health Care Policy Center to get out its message that value must be part of the health care equation. Launched about four years ago, the center has consulted with 1,200 "thought leaders," as it calls them, and 1,400 patients to draft what it calls the four cornerstones for health care reform. They are: creating value to improve patient care, coordinating patient care, reforming the payment system to consider value and providing health insurance for all.

"Thought leaders" is so Orwellian. You would think they could come up with a better label.

The clinic has also put forward the idea of "value indexing" to determine how providers get paid. Wood said that the system would take into account patient outcomes and cost over a period of time. He added that the current bills in Congress contain "very little that reflects payment for value."

Sounds good on paper, but I wonder how many are willing to accept a position such as this.

"Yes, the proposed treatment has a chance of working but the greater prospect is that it won't. Therefore, it is not a covered expense. Next!"

Klobuchar said it is also critical that providers be rewarded for preventive care efforts, adding, "right now, doctors are paid to treat disease not prevent them."

That is such a silly premise.

Doctors don't prevent disease. People do.

Your doc can tell you to lose weight and get more exercise until the cows come home but that won't make it happen.