Big Hat, No Cattle

The folks in Texas have a saying.                      

Big hat, no cattle.

A phrase used to describe someone  or some thing that makes a lot of noise (brags) but has nothing of substance.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce published a report on The Path Forward for Health Care Reform. Some of the tidbits.

The Mission:

To achieve greater value in health care, as measured by more affordable coverage options and greater access to higher-quality, prevention-oriented care, leading to better population health and sustainable U.S. health care costs. By prioritizing efforts to improve the employer-sponsored health system which covers millions of Americans, we will use these solutions to drive system-wide changes.

As Emily Litella would say, "Isn't that special?".

Sounds great but offers nothing you can, uh, hang your hat on.

The recommended changes released by the Chamber’s Health Care Solutions Council include:

-Facilitating and rewarding better coordination among all providers – nurses, hospitals, specialists, and primary care doctors;-Advancing efforts to define quality simply and clearly so that providers understand the metrics by which they will be measured;-Removing barriers to easily understandable and comparable information on the cost and quality of health care services;-Encouraging consumers to use this information to make health care decisions based on careful consideration of the expense and the likely outcome;-Protecting the ability to buy (or offer) affordable health care coverage that promotes higher-value care in the near term; and-Applying the lessons of these private sector reforms to improve Medicare and Medicaid by providing better care to the rapidly growing beneficiary populations served by these programs entitlement programs; and supporting innovations in the employer-sponsored system.

You need a secret decoder ring to figure that one out.