The coming health care tsunami

U.S. senator lays out solutions to the health care crisis

TUESDAY, MAY 6, 2008

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse

If you doubt that big changes are in store for the U.S. health care system, just do the numbers, says U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island).

Speaking to 150 union leaders, health care purchasers and policymakers at an April 2008 forum co-sponsored by Kaiser Permanente and the National Labor College, Whitehouse warned of a "tsunami of health care costs... It's 10 years out, we can see it coming...and it will take 10 years to fix." The obvious conclusion: Start now.

He noted an estimated $35 trillion in entitlement costs looming in the coming years. And health care—which accounts for a growing percentage of those costs and consumes about $2 trillion a year over all—remains wasteful and inconsistent.

The question is "how to make [health care] more efficient and effective, not just how to finance it," he said. "You cannot just cut a broken system."

The solution must include "three threads," according to Whitehouse:

• health information technology,
• quality improvement, and
• new payment mechanisms to support best practices.

Whitehouse called KP "a leader in making the solution" to the health care crisis—especially in its pioneering use of information technology.