M-RCBG Associate Working Paper No. 30
Policy Design and Redesign of American Healthcare
Tim McDonald
2014
Abstract
The first two sections of this paper aim at identifying a redesign strategy for American health reform that could be more effective than current strategies for national health reform. By “more effective” is meant more likely to achieve the goals of Title One of the Affordable Care Act: Quality, affordable health care for all Americans. The identified policy design is called Informed Consumer Choice (ICC), and has two components: (1) Develop rigorous information on the quality and cost to all payers of healthcare providers; and (2) Build incentives into patients’ health plans to encourage them to choose healthcare providers that are better for less. After performing statistical analysis to shed light on an underdeveloped area of research central to the argument for the policy design, the PAE outlines a plan for the implementing a demonstration of ICC in Minnesota.