The July 22 edition of the Des Moines Register featured a guest column from IHA president and CEO Kirk Norris titled, “Iowans’ health care in jeopardy if reform means reallocation.”

In his column, Norris outlined the key issues Congress should consider while working to reform the nation’s health care system.

The main theme of the article urges Congress to develop a payment method that incents providers to deliver efficient care (efficiency = high quality and low cost) instead of being paid just on quality alone.

This is a particularly important concept for states like Iowa, because we have one of the lowest levels of Medicare spending per beneficiary nationwide.  This fact has been highlighted on the IHA blog before, citing statistics from the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care measuring health care value.

However, the current debate only holds the potential for further disenfranchisement of high-performing states (like Iowa, ranked second in the nation in quality and cost) with changes to the system that seek to simply reallocate current resources  rather than change the outdated and inefficient payment methods that would actually produce the reform the system needs.

Please stop by the Des Moines Register Web site to read the full article and feel free to share your comments, either there or here on the IHA blog (below).