Health insurance reform might not be the key to improving health care. Maybe letting providers experiment with new delivery models will yield bigger gains in efficiency, quality, and access. That’s the idea behind the Mercatus Center’s Healthcare Openness and Access Project, which measures “the flexibility and discretion that patients and providers have in managing health and health care” in each state. Here is one fun finding from the project: “A leftward tilt in the ACA debate does not necessarily correlate with tight centralized control of health care at the state level. Nor does a rightward tilt in the debate always comport with extensive patient-provider discretion. For example, HOAP suggests that Oregon, a reliably blue state, offers broad leeway to patients and providers while Georgia, a very red state, has some of the most restrictive healthcare laws and regulations in the nation.”
More HERE