There are so many ways to do this!
Taking a look at the Commonwealth Fund’s International Health Care System Profiles makes it abundantly clear; there is no one way to structure a universal health care system.
Here in New Mexico, we’re busy figuring out the many details for our own state-based plan, using the 2019 Health Security Act as a guide. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, with many pieces that all need to work together.
When solving this puzzle, certain pieces are more important to address first. The following three were chosen for the first year of this design process:
Federal laws and waiver requirements, to ensure that federal funding continues and recipients do not lose benefits
Global budgets for hospitals, to provide guaranteed revenue for health care facilities, many of which are financially stressed
Standardized payment systems for health care professionals, to enable providers to spend more time on patient care and to reduce health care system costs
Six pieces of the system are being addressed this year:
Global budget working group, to build on last year’s research on this issue
All-payer rate system, to look at setting up a system that sets uniform reimbursement rates for health care professionals
Prescription drug affordability, to explore how to develop a prescription drug program that lowers prices for patients
Medicaid expenditure data, to understand the cost of the Medicaid managed care program, which covers 900,000 New Mexico residents
Inter-operational IT system, to explore how to create an inter-operational IT system that applies to all New Mexico insurers and health care providers
State health expenditure data, to find out how much we are actually spending on health care in our state and exactly what we are spending it on
We’ve created a new webpage dedicated to the Health Security Plan design process. Bookmark it today to stay up to date!