The surest way to improve the healthcare that Wisconsinites receive is to enable people to get the greatest satisfaction at the most favorable price via a free and transparent market.
At the moment, the healthcare market in Wisconsin is far from free and transparent.
In this report, scholars Daniel Sem and Scott Niederjohn lay out concrete steps that Wisconsin policymakers can take to change that, to enable medical professionals and the patients who need them to meet directly — reforms to what they term “the patient-provider interface.” It means removing barriers to providing individualized and innovative care, while letting patients choose services and getting them the information they need to make decisions.
Sem and Niederjohn specifically address new, better options for buying healthcare, reforms Wisconsin can undertake to moderate drug prices and improve availability, ways to expand access to doctors, tools to let patients find better care at a better price and changes to ensure that enough providers will be available when Wisconsinites need them.
These reforms center on reducing the role and influence of third parties such as insurers and governments, and shifting power to patients and the providers they choose. Reforms need to happen at the federal level, too, but as the authors make clear, state policymakers have a great many tasks — and can accomplish great things now.
