Health care reform – finally!

A nurse cares for a patient at the Harbor City facility

The United States Congress has passed a law that President Obama will sign that will guarantee access to health insurance for nearly everyone who lives in the US. This legislation is a huge step in the direction of making access to health care a right, not a privilege.

Finally.

There is much to be critical and unsure of in the new law. But, I don’t think that is what we should focus on. Union members on the frontline of Kaiser Permanente are literally at the center of one of the most important opportunities in the modern history of our country: we who work on the frontline of the nation’s largest non-profit health care system can show how this new law can become a true success --to deliver high quality affordable health care for all, and to do it with a highly motivated, best paid, unionized workforce.

Incredible!

An opportunity and responsibility for Kaiser Permanente

Why have health systems from around the world, systems that guarantee health care to all of their people, been studying Kaiser Permanente for many years? 

It’s because Kaiser Permanente’s model of care, based on pre-payment, prevention, large multi-specialty group medical practice, integrated electronic medical records, and its labor management partnership, is seen as a gigantic successful example of how to deliver the best, most reliable and accessible care. And we deliver this quality care within a budget with high fixed costs and great jobs for KP workers. 

The challenge for all nations to is to figure out how to deliver the care to its entire population and be able to afford to do so. 

Now, finally, everything changes in the US, too! We can now have the same discussion.

As we perfect our partnership, we are motivated by a call to action: we have all the pieces, now let’s take Kaiser Permanente to the top of the charts on all measures of success. 

A new race to the top

As we participate in the great and compassionate work of expansion of coverage to those who need care, we know it will be done in a time of shrinking reimbursements and rising costs. Quality and access must be improved as we also reduce the cost of delivery of care.

Our commitment to frontline collaborative engagement creates systemic improvements every day.  We are getting better and better at it.

So, it is a time to celebrate. Most are comparing the health care reform legislation to the three other great leaps ahead for the American people in the last century: Social Security, Medicare, and Civil Rights. I agree.

Not unlike these other great leaps forward, these great advances are also at risk. No law that can fix major social needs alone. In fact, the day a law is passed, is the first day to go to work to make it effective in the face of staggering challenge:  economic, market, fiscal, political, rhetorical and ideological. In fact, the deep-seated problems that created the need for the law in the first place never go away; rather, they evolve and become even bigger and more complex.

The Unions and Kaiser Permanente have had the right model for a long-time.  It is time for this model to emerge now out of its long history of both success and deep challenge. 

We can show how to make health care great, affordable, and delivered by the best paid unionized workforce. Now we can do it under the banner we have sought for so long:  HEALTH CARE FOR ALL!