Domestic Health Reform

Notes from the Road: Global South Summit 2013

NASHVILLE | At the Global South Summit last week, I moderated a panel on one of my favorite topics: transforming healthcare into health. There is much discussion about how the current model of healthcare is “broken.” But the fact is, the system is producing exactly what it was designed to produce. The problem is that…

Notes from the Road: 2013 Health Care Investors Conference

NASHVILLE | Last Wednesday, (Nov 13) I had the privilege of joining Bass, Berry and Sims and Deloitte at the 2013 Health Care Investors Conference. I sat down with Brad Smith, CEO of Aspire Health; Andrew Lasher, CMO of Aspire Health; and Anna Gene O’Neal, CEO of Alive Hospice, to discuss some of challenges and…

Bloomberg: The Real Price of Healthcare

Nov. 21 (Bloomberg) — Bloomberg View columnist Lanhee Chen is joined by former U.S. Senate majority leader William Frist, Mayo Clinic CEO John Noseworthy, Boston Consulting Group partner Michael Ringel, John Hopkins Medicine CEO Paul Rothman, Thompson Holdings CEO Tommy Thompson, and Walgreen CEO Gregory Wasson to discuss the state of healthcare in the United…

End-of-life care plan can ensure wishes are respected

(The Tennessean, November 4, 2013) By Sen. Bill Frist, M.D. and Manoj Jain, M.D Fifth of six parts that will appear this fall “I would never have my mother, who has cancer, go through this,” a hospital case manager in her 50s says. “I would never have her be strapped to the bed. Never have a…

Health care group a guide in time of change

(The Tennessean, September 15, 2013) By Larry Van Horn, Ph.d., and Sen. Bill Frist, M.D. October 2014 is a month that our nation has eyed for more than four years. We will take a historic step to revamp our health care system by enrolling millions of Americans in federally mandated health insurance coverage. At the…

Technology And The Changing Business Of Health Care

(Health Affairs, August 14, 2013) By Bill Frist, M.D. and Tom Daschle Three years after the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as “Obamacare,” scholars and political pundits have paid much attention to the macroeconomic effects of the law. Will Obamacare bend the health care cost curve?  What will be…

Nashville Health Care Council Fellows

“What we witnessed is bipartisan dialogue, exposure to world-known individuals, new methods of learning, strategies and tactics I have put to use, and a consistent and engaging forum for dialogue. I consider this class one of the single most important investments I have made in myself.” -Laura Beth Brown, Vice President, Vanderbilt Health Services, Vanderbilt…

Future of Healthcare is Personalized Medicine

(Diplomatic Courier, July 08, 2013) By Sen. Bill Frist, M.D. It is a common refrain that America has the best health care in the world, but our people are far from the healthiest. We spend twice as much as any other nation on health services, yet rank dismally, behind more than twenty other countries in…

Phasing Out Fee-For-Service

(The New England Journal of Medicine, May 22, 2013) By Bill Frist and Steven Schroeder In March 2012, the Society of General Internal Medicine convened the National Commission on Physician Payment Reform to recommend forms of payment that would maximize good clinical outcomes, enhance patient and physician satisfaction and autonomy, and provide cost-effective care. The…

Cost Sustainability

(Modern Healthcare, May 18, 2013) By Bill Frist and Dr. Manoj Jain We have done it. We have decreased the increase in the cost of healthcare. Let us explain. For three decades (1980–2009), the cost of healthcare has been increasing each year at an average rate of 7.4%—double the rate of inflation. However, over the…

How to Build a Better Health-Care System

(Washington Post, April 17, 2013) By Tom Daschle, Bill Frist, Pete Domenici, and Alice Rivlin Tom Daschle, a Democrat and former senator from South Dakota, was Senate majority leader from 2001 to 2003. Bill Frist, a Republican and former senator from Tennessee, was Senate majority leader from 2003 to 2007. Pete Domenici, a Republican and…

States’ Rare Chance to Expand Medicaid

(Politico, April 11, 2013) By Bill Frist A proposal unveiled by Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam late last month leverages federal funds to purchase private coverage for new Medicaid eligibles in the state’s health insurance exchange. In recent weeks, Arkansas became the first state to embrace a similar plan. This market-based approach, known as “premium assistance,”…

Changing the Way Physicians are Paid: Report of the National Commission on Physician Payment Reform

(Health Affairs Blog, March 4, 2013) By Bill Frist and Steven Schroeder The loud cries warning that rising health care costs are going to destroy the nation’s economy have been shouted so often that the will to move firmly in any one direction has almost halted. We’ve all heard them: health care costs are unsustainable,…

To Contain Health Care Costs, Pay Doctors Differently

(Politico, March 4, 2013) by Bill Frist and Steven Schroeder Lawmakers have spent decades dancing around how to stop health care costs from eating up greater and greater portions of our overall budget. Even now, the proposals on the table look at cuts in services, asking seniors covered under Medicare to pick up a higher…

Podcast: Bill Frist Discusses the Fellowship Group with Modern Healthcare

Transplant surgeon and former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) sees a healthcare industry in flux, driven by the need crack the “value equation” that ties cost control to outcomes. Frist signed on as co-director of a new fellowship program established by the Nashville Healthcare Council to help council members’ executives meet that challenge. Modern…

Personalized Medicine

(The Hill, July 10, 2012) It’s time to think of health in a disruptive way. Policy must set the enabling landscape, but the truly dramatic and the transformative will come from the exploding but still very young field of personalized medicine. All healthcare is local, and all health is personal. Personalized medicine is healthcare targeted…

What my doctor thinks of Obamacare?

(The Week, August 29, 2012) Lawmakers in D.C. may truly be committed to improving America’s health-care system. But according to actual physicians, our leaders are going about it all wrong Want real health reform that is in the interest of you and your family? Don’t make the same mistake that Washington did. In formulating ObamaCare,…

Need for Affordable Care Cuts Across Party Lines

(The Hill, August 1, 2012) Need for affordable care cuts across party lines By Tom Daschle and Bill Frist On June 28, 2012, the Supreme Court issued a decision that affects the health and well-being of every American, as well as the fiscal future of our nation. By affirming the constitutionality of the Patient Protection…

Why both parties should embrace ObamaCare’s state exchanges

(The Week, July 18, 2012) By Bill Frist, M.D. Largely lost in the fight over ObamaCare is a worthy provision that lets states develop insurance systems that are right for them — but they must act soon. When the new health care reform law was being debated in 2009 and 2010, everyone talked about “death…

The world needs more health-care workers — millions more

(The Week, Posted on June 19, 2012) By Bill Frist, M.D. The most impressive part of any hospital or health clinic is the caring, skilled employees who prevent and treat illness. But the workforce we have is not enough.   As I visit health programs in far off corners of the world and right here…

How to wean America from its dangerous food addiction

(The Week, posted on May 22, 2012 ) By Bill Frist, M.D. The nation’s obesity epidemic is as much about brain chemistry as it is poor diet and laziness — a fact we must realize if we’re going to treat obesity effectively In ancient history, eating was for survival. Food was tough to come by…

Premium Support is the Only Way to Fix America’s Medicare Mess

(The Week, March 27, 2012) By Bill Frist, M.D. To save Medicare — and rein in our national debt — we must transform the entitlement program into a defined-contribution system Nothing is scarier than losing your health. A close second, however, is getting sick and not being able to afford the care you need. For…

How the Supreme Court’s ‘ObamaCare’ ruling will affect you

(The Week, March 13, 2012) By Bill Frist, M.D. The nation’s highest court is about to judge the president’s signature legislative achievement — and it’s not just politicians who are invested in the outcome. Is the new health care law constitutional? You might think it doesn’t matter — or at least, that it doesn’t matter…

3 ways to fix America’s child poverty problem

(The Week, February 28, 2012) By Bill Frist, M.D. One in five American children suffers through extreme financial hardship. It doesn’t have to be that way Americans hear a lot about decline. Declines in manufacturing, fading productivity, plummeting home values, spiralling deficits, and sadly, dwindling faith in the American dream. Let me tell you where…

What Childhood Poverty Means

(Huffington Post, February 3, 2012) By Bill Frist, M.D. This post is part of a series on childhood poverty in the United States in partnership with Save the Children and Julianne Moore. Moore leads the organization’s Valentine’s Day campaign, through which cards are sold to support the fight against poverty in the U.S. To learn…

University of Alabama – Health Care Reform Summit

Bill Frist on Morning Meeting w/ Dylan Ratigan

Frist on Health Care Reform

American Morning -Health bill- A First Step

Larry King Live / Dean, Frist spar over summit

Senator Frist on the Childhood Obesity Epidemic

Why is ending childhood obesity such an important issue for you? Why is ending childhood obesity such an important issue for you? from Bill Frist on Vimeo. What is the private sector’s role? What is the private sector’s role? from Bill Frist on Vimeo. Why should the private sector care about childhood obesity? Why should…

Senator Frist’s Recommended Changes to US Health Care

I sat down with the Alliance for Health Reform earlier this year and talked about some necessary changes and helpful ideas for the future of healthcare reform. Watch the videos below to see my thoughts on the big changes needed to US health care and especially the need to support primary care. Sen. Bill Frist’s…

Private sector must join in fight against child obesity

More than one-fifth of preschool children are overweight or obese. That’s 20 percent of kids 5 years old and younger who are already on track for chronic health problems such as cancer, type 2 diabetes and heart disease before their first day of kindergarten. That’s more than 4 million toddlers already queued up for health…

America’s Greatness and “Real” Healthcare Reform

  By William H. Frist, MD, Former US Senate Majority Leader, and Ejaz Elahi, Dresner Partners Introduction. In this article, we review the current state of the healthcare landscape, the fundamental causes of how we got here, and the legislative response. In addition, we offer a view to the likely future direction of the healthcare…

University of Alabama – Health Care Reform Summit

I spoke last Thursday, February 17th, at the Health Care Reform Summit hosted by the University of Alabama Business School. Here is my full talk on the scope and intent of Obamacare, a little “inside baseball” on the passage of the bill, and the way forward. University of Alabama – Health Care Reform Summit from…

In Case You Missed It… RealClearPolitics : Newsmaker Interview with Bill Frist

RCP: Republican candidates are pledging to repeal the health care bill, and with your background in medicine and also as a leader in the Senate acutely aware of policy-making, what’s the best way for Republicans to proceed? Frist: Republicans will not repeal the fundamentals of the new law. Because of the law’s unpopularity with so…

Health care, education, and places to go, things to do

The federal health care law has a lot in common with TennCare, says former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. “They both began with a benefit package that was very rich and had no effective cost controls or cost accountability in the system,” Frist said during a recent conversation in Washington. There are elements within…

Frist Named As Vice Chair For First Lady Michelle Obama’s Childhood Obesity Foundation

Partnership for a Healthier America Expands Leadership, Naming Board of Directors and Honorary Vice Chairs Sen. Frist, Mayor Booker Join First Lady Michelle Obama as Honorary Leaders of Childhood Obesity Foundation Nine-Member Board of Directors Brings Vast Array of Experience and Expertise to Support Partnership, Guide its Activities Washington, DC – The Partnership for a Healthier…

Frist Reacts to Health Care Overhaul

With Congress passing the Health Care Reform Bill last night, Senator Frist has been doing several interviews discussing his take on the bill and what it means for this country. Here is Senator Frist’s interview on CNBC about the Health Care Reform Bill.

Frist / Breaux Op-Ed in Politico

(Politico, March 19, 2010) By Sen. Bill Frist, M.D. and Sen. John Breaux Though we come from different political backgrounds and disagree on key aspects of health-care reform, we share a deep concern about provisions of proposed legislation that would establish a super-powerful board to dictate the future of Medicare. While the new entity, an…

Senator Frist Discusses Health Reform on TV

Senator Frist has been on TV lately discussing the recent Health Care Summit.  Here is the link to watch Senator Frist on Charlie Rose, on 2/25/10.  Below is his appearance on Larry King Live.

A Historic and Dangerous Senate Mistake

By Bill Frist Published: February 26, 2010 Using ‘reconciliation’ to ram through health reform would only deepen partisan passions. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has announced that while Democrats have a number of options to complete health-care legislation, he may use the budget reconciliation process to do so. This would be an unprecedented, dangerous and…

Sen. Frist in The New York Times: How the G.O.P. Can Fix Health Care

In a bid to reopen the debate over health care reform, President Obama has arranged a televised bipartisan meeting this Thursday. Republican leaders in Congress have been invited to bring their best ideas for slowing the growth of health care expenditures and expanding the number of insured Americans. The Op-Ed editors asked five conservative thinkers…

Don’t Give Up on Healthcare in 2010

Americans have once again demonstrated when it comes to health reform, they are most comfortable with incremental, not comprehensive, policy changes. With an increasingly distrustful public, a real-dollar price tag of over $2 trillion, policies that fail to address out-of-control cost escalation and a federal debt that is projected to grow from $12.3 to $21…