Health Chiefs Weigh In on Reform

Even as Harry Reid scrambles to find enough votes to bring his health reform bill to the Senate floor, many industry executives are convinced that some form of a health care overhaul bill will become law.

The House already passed its version, and Reid, the Senate majority leader, merged two bills in his chamber. The goal, as stated by President Obama, is to expand coverage, curb costs, and improve quality. It's a tall order and will have a sizable impact on health care businesses like pharmaceutical makers, drugstores, insurance companies, and technology providers.

Over the last few weeks I've asked some top chief executives and chief financial officers from different segments of the health industry to size up the most important aspects of health reform. What needs to be done? What systematic changes should be made, and what should remain the same?

Here's what they had to say:

Fred Hassan, chief executive of Schering-Plough Corp., says don't upset the current system.

"There's a healthy tension in terms of the various aspects of health care, including expanded coverage and improved quality, which is very, very important," Hassan says.

"I'd keep the present system in tact. Eighty five percent of people have insurance and have very good access," Hassan says. "I would work on the other 15 percent and try to improve coverage."

Wade D. Miquelon, chief financial officer for pharmacy chain Walgreen Co. says that big employers are doing a number of things to control costs among their own workforces. Legislation should encourage such ideas, he says.

"It's important that private enterprise still play an important role," Miquelon says. "Taking that out limits innovation."

"The best innovation in health care is the employers taking health care back into their control," he adds.

Wayne S. DeVeydt, executive vice president and chief financial officer of insurer WellPoint Inc., says the law needs to have a strong mandate that everyone buy health insurance.

"Every American has to participate," DeVeydt says.

If a primary goal is to cut costs, the answer is measuring the quality of care given by doctors and hospitals, he adds. Health insurers are not driving up medical costs, he says.

"You're not going to control costs by going after this industry," DeVeydt says.

While reform will be a plus for Athenahealth Inc.'s business "whose very existence is to remove the complexities of running a practice," CEO Jonathan Bush says the reform debate is misguided.

Athenahealth provides Internet-based services for doctors' practices, a business Bush says will thrive as the government expands to cover more people. But he thinks government-run plans like Medicaid are inefficient and there's been too much focus on creating another public insurance plan. "The idea of creating another bureaucracy would be tragic," he says.

"Calling it a health reform is off the charts stupid. This is not reform," Bush says. “This bill is the enhancement to the sclerosis of health care. There is not a single bit of reform in it.”