Print | Email AAIM Approves Health Care Reform Principles (September 17, 2009) 

The Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine (AAIM) approved Monday, September 14, 2009, the AAIM Health Care Reform Principles.  The six principles address health care coverage, delivery system, oversight, financing, improvement through research and technology, and workforce.

In light of health care reform debates in Congress and the prospect of passing reform legislation, a writing group of the AAIM Advocacy Committee—Don C. Glazier, Michael R. Grever, MD, Gregory C. Kane, MD, MaryAnn Kuzma, MD, Tayloe H. Loftus, MD, and Steven D. Shapiro, MD—worked to compose a list of health care reform principles to guide AAIM advocacy efforts.  The six principles are:

·        All Americans should have access to affordable, continuous, and adequate health care coverage regardless of disability or condition.  Coverage should include basic services that provide preventative, chronic, and acute care.

·        Health care should be a high-quality, patient-centered, and coordinated system that is supported by all providers participating in a patient’s care.  

·        There should be congressionally mandated oversight of minimum coverage that health care plans will include based on sound clinical evidence and cost-benefit analysis. 

·        The health care financing system should be reformed to support the implementation of affordable, coordinated, and high-quality health care.

·        Ongoing health care improvement requires significant innovation achieved through research.  Comparative effectiveness research and health information technology should be funded and utilized to promote health care efficiency and quality. 

·        To adequately meet the nation’s health care needs, the primary care physician workforce should be expanded.  Physician reimbursement should be realigned to promote development and retention of primary care physicians.

Included with the principles are corresponding vignettes that serve to illustrate the urgent need for each principle to be adopted by Congress in any piece of reform legislation. 

The six principles will provide the alliance a basis from which to work when advocating for health care reform and considering the endorsement of legislation.  AAIM advocacy will continue to focus on physician workforce and medical education in the reform bills, but having approved broader principles provides an opportunity for alliance discussion on more specific health care reform issues.