Healthcare Leaders Meet the Press

Let’s give credit to “Meet the Press” for choosing to address healthcare in its January 5 installment by turning to actual health industry leaders instead of the usual Washington, D.C. talking heads.

Cleveland Clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove and Mayo Clinic CEO John Noseworthy, both physicians as well as hospital executives, joined host David Gregory to discuss the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and, just as importantly, other healthcare issues that deserve more attention than they generally receive in the media.

Both Dr. Cosgrove and Dr. Noseworthy, for example, emphasized the importance of improving a Medicare program that is headed toward insolvency, saying that this a key to addressing healthcare costs.  To quote Dr. Noseworthy, “The long-term sustainability of Medicare is something no one has taken on yet.  The nation has to have the courage to step up to the looming insolvency of Medicare.”

And Dr. Cosgrove also emphasized the critical role of wellness and disease prevention in achieving health system sustainability.  Mentioning the cost ramifications of the growing obesity epidemic in the United States, he said, “We need to have incentives for individuals to take care of themselves, and that’s not a big enough part of the new law as it should be.”

Dr. Noseworthy and Dr. Cosgrove are both members of the Healthcare Leadership Council.

You can see the video of their Meet the Press appearance here.  Articles about their comments can be found here and here.