Health & the UK

We hope you will join us this coming Monday for a special briefing to explore the question: "Is a tax credit a tax cut for the uninsured?" Professor Mark Pauly and Jeff Lemieux of the Progressive Policy Institute will be our featured presenters, with John McManus of the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee and Pete Stein of Senator Rick Santorum's office giving the view from the hill. Merrill Matthews and Grace-Marie Turner will give the introduction and conclusion respectively, with Greg Scandlen moderating the discussion.

You won't want to miss this event that the Galen Institute is jointly sponsoring with the Council for Affordable Health Insurance. Please join us Monday, May 12, at noon, room G-11 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. RSVP to tara@galen.org. Lunch will be available.

I'm writing this from London where I am meeting with our colleagues in the free-market policy community here and taking notes on the success that Dr. David Green and his colleagues at the Institute for the Study of Civil Society are having with their UK Consensus Group. They and their colleagues from other market-based think tanks here are injecting free-market ideas into a health system that is 90% controlled by government.

Even though the health sectors in Britain and the U.S. are very, very different, the similarities in policy recommendations are surprisingly similar. For example, the 15 signatories to the UK Consensus Group statement calling for reform of the National Health Service have recommended a consumer-choice model based upon the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program in the U.S.

I'm here to talk about President Bush's framework for Medicare reform and discuss ways that we can learn from each other about making this idea a reality - on both sides of the Atlantic.

Creating a bridge for an exchange of ideas that empower individuals also is the mission of the Atlantic Bridge, a new organization founded by Dr. Liam Fox, the courageous and market-savvy Shadow Health Minister here. The Atlantic Bridge is holding its first major conference this Saturday in Oxford and I've been invited to speak to explore the question: "How much health care can we afford?"

I plan to explain that the only solution to health costs in both of our countries is innovation and providing incentives for consumers to become partners rather than adversaries in making wise use of health care resources. I will provide a link to my PowerPoint presentation and further reports on meetings here in next week's newsletter.

It's very exciting indeed to see the energy and enthusiasm around free-market ideas here.

Grace-Marie Turner