I am find a lot of articles about people wanting "single payer" or a continuation/improvement of Obamacare or the destruction of Obamacare and its replacement by something else.  Most of these talk about financing, with some lip service about improved quality.  But I am not finding any description from anyone about exactly what a post Obama health care system needs to have.

When we do corporate strategic planning in the private sector, this is the first question we ask. What do people want?  Without answering that question, we have no idea where to get to, much less how much it should cost.

Judging from people's complaints and working backwards (which is not the same as starting with a model and working forwards), people want access to all available providers (which is to say that all providers are in-network), they want zero out of pocket expense, and they want some sort of quantitive clarity about how good a provider really is before they receive services.  This pretty much covers everything.  Is there anything else?  And more importantly, for any system, if you had to settle for less than this, what would you tolerate?

unagidon is a contributing editor to Commonweal.

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