Hal Luft is a veteran policy analyst who's been looking at all aspects of the health care system. He's Professor Emeritus at UCSF and now is director of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation Research Institute.
His recent book Total Cure had a fabulous review from JD Kleinke in Health Affairs and essentially presents a combination of a universal insurance pool for chronic care and hospital care, and choice between independent physicians for routine primary care. It's a mix of universal care, and market solution. In this (long) interview I ask Hal about the idea, and he also goes on to explain how the central core of the idea–a public body that essentially re-routes payments to care delivery teams might well be part of the emerging legislation. Given that (as Robert Samuelson points out in the WaPo today), we haven't seen much of a mechanism for cost containment from the legislation proposed so far, yet all agree that we need one, Luft's ideas are becoming become influential rather quickly.
Hal Luft's writing have been prominent lately and there'll be more from him on THCB tomorrow. But this will probably give you the best introduction to his ideas. I highly recommend that you take the time to listen to this interview.
