X Prize Plus WellPoint: World's Worst Contest
The X Prize Foundation, the folks who awarded millions for the first private space flight and would give $10 million for a commercial 100-mpg car, announced today that its next big prize will be aimed at health care. And the designer of the prize qualifications will be... WellPoint, the for-profit parent of Blue Cross, a corporation that has done so much to make health insurance in America unaffordable and often unavailable. Do you want WellPoint designing its own ideal for "efficient" health care? No? Then read on and click the link below to tell X Prize what you think of the idea, or propose a better one.
From the announcement:
WellPoint, Inc. (NYSE: WLP), the nation’s largest health benefits company, and the WellPoint Foundation, one of the largest corporate foundations in the United States are collaborating with the X PRIZE Foundation to develop an X PRIZE designed to generate new ways to address the nation’s serious health care system challenges.
In addition, WellPoint has committed to testing the selected finalists’ entries in its state markets, in order to test their ability to result in viable, creative and achievable health care system changes.
Wellpoint's generous offer to "test ... finalist's entries in its state markets" tells us that by definition the finalists will have to be commercial insurance products. No single payer ideas or regulatory solutions or hybrid public-private plans, like letting all of us buy into Medicare will be welcome. It'll be all free-market, baby.
Then, when the X Prize Foundation asks for ideas, they make it clear who they'll listen to:
We're looking for ideas and feedback from employers, key health, business and government leaders and independent measurement/auditing entities to develop the structure, guidelines and judging criteria for a Health Care X PRIZE. Our hope is to make this prize development process as collaborative as possible, to ensure that all relevant topics are covered.
No patients, patient advocates or consumer groups are welcome. The main endorsers mentioned so far are the president of WellPoint, the president of a for-profit medical group and Newt Gingrich.
Some of the Health Care X Prize goals are useful, including reduced administrative costs (which are caused by insurers' own crazed fragmentation of the system), and better care for chronic diseases like diabetes (though insurers do their best to exclude diabetics from coverage). So letting WellPoint decide the goals of the $10 million prize means the best outcome will be at best a better jalopy, not a new car.
The final design of the prize won't be announced until next year. So follow this link to the X Prize Foundation's comment page and let them know they need bigger ideas than perpetuating what we have now, even in a "more efficient" way. You'll have to register, but only with your e-mail address.
Check around on the rest of AmericanHealthPlan for ideas if you'd like, and borrow freely.