Goal

A high quality, affordable, and sustainable health care system for all Washington state residents.

The problems

We believe the most challenging problems facing health care are the intertwined issues of:

• Cost — Current cost trends must be contained to create an affordable and sustainable health care system.
• Access — Too many individuals in our state lack health insurance coverage.
• Quality — Patients do not always receive the care they should when they should. For example:
  • Some individuals lack relationships with primary care practitioners who know them and understand their health care needs;
  • There is unwarranted variation in care; and
  • Evidence-based practices are not always followed.

Our strategies to improve the system

Because health care problems are complex, we believe in sequential steps to improve the system. We need both a roadmap for change that aligns our efforts and a step-by-step approach to moving toward a set of common goals. An efficient and effective health care system can do a better job of caring for more Washington state residents at an affordable cost. Our main strategies include:

• Innovative, private sector leadership in pilot projects that test practical methods for reducing costs and improving quality.
• Legislation that helps to reduce the number of uninsured, contains escalating health care cost trends, and improves health care system performance. Proposals to reduce the number of uninsured must not come at the expense of unfairly shifting costs to other segments of the population (for example, purchasers, employers, and providers)