As of today, the website and U.S. Healthcare Constitution Project are officially underway and on-line.  Please join us with your submissions, thoughts and comments.

Over the next couple of weeks we will be starting to get the word out about the project and formally inviting the participation of members of the public, organizations and individuals.  We will also be tweaking the website and submission entry process to work out the inevitable kinks.  Please make it a point to tell everyone you know who may be interested in this important project!

This week we're pleased to bring you a guest blog entry from Dr. Richard Fogoros.  For those of you who have not heard of him previously, "Dr. Rich" is one of the most articulate observers and analysts of healthcare policies and their consequences that we have ever encountered.  A cardiologist by training, Fogoros has been blogging for years on the subject of how incentives and disincentives present in the healthcare system directly affect patients, providers and the practice of medicine.  He has kindly given permission for us to re-publish a recent entry in his own blog (find it here) that provides a highly relevant historical perspective on how healthcare reform is currently being undertaken.

What The Founders Would Say About HR 3962

By Dr. Richard N. Fogoros

DrRich has not read the healthcare reform bill (HR 3962) passed by the US House of Representatives late Saturday night, and he does not plan to. He spent far too much time this summer wading through the prior version of the bill (HR 3200), only to conclude that it did not say anything in particular, but rather, was intentionally vague on most key points. The new bill, being nearly twice the length of HR 3200, must necessarily be twice as vague.

So that anyone hoping for DrRich’s analysis of the new bill won’t go away disappointed, he offers here an observation on the new bill, which, he asserts, you can take to the bank.

Read more: A Thought-Provoking Perspective on Healthcare Reform and HR 3962

Getting the internal workings of the website completed has been more difficult than anticipated.  The official launch has therefore been pushed back to November 1^st.

On the positive side, we’re pleased to welcome Jim Grigsby and Phoebe Barton to the board of directors of USHC.org.  Both Pheobe and Jim have years of experience in healthcare services research and policy.  They are also creative, broad-minded and dedicated to making American healthcares sustainable, efficient and fair.  Phoebe has written one of the best and most widely used textbooks on America’s healthcare system.  It can be found here .

You don’t have to wait until the website is fully functional to register, comment or submit articles, models or ideas.  Please get in touch, and tell others about the site and project.  It’s time to get started!

The U.S. Healthcare Constitution website is still under development.  This blog will be used for updates to The Project status.  We expect that the website will go "live" by October 5, 2009.

The U.S. Healthcare Constitution Project is an effort to reach a national consensus with respect to the type of healthcare system we wish to have in the United States, as well as defining the rights, responsibilities, powers and limitations of the primary participants in the U.S. healthcare system. These participants include patients and their families, healthcare providers, government, healthcare insurers and those who pay for the care provided.

We believe that the need for this project and a healthcare constitution is self-evident.  In no other single part of our society and economy are the personal stakes so high, the costs so massive, and the potential for harm and good being done on a mass scale so prominent, as in healthcare.  Despite this, neither our business nor political leaders have attempted to articulate a broad and complete version of how our nation should approach the nature, financing and delivery of healthcare goods and services.  This has left even the most basic questions unanswered as a matter of public policy.  Some examples include:

• What is the basis on which our nation should choose to adopt (or neglect to adopt) universal health insurance coverage?
• Since there can never be enough resources to provide every desired healthcare good or service to every American, how will decisions regarding the inevitable allocation (also known as "rationing") of these goods and services be made?
• Powerful organizations like health insurance companies and government agencies have the ability to make decisions that profoundly affect the economics of healthcare, as well as the rights of patients and providers.  If unchecked, they have the power to interfere in the decisions that patients and providers might expect to make privately.  What limitations should be placed upon these organizations to ensure that their power is not abused?

In the absence of a general consensus on the type of healthcare system Americans wish to have (and a written document that describes the nature of that health system), there is no meaningful healthcare "debate".  Why?  To illustrate, let's take an example from a different field.

Read more: The Project Update