For starters, she speaks our language.  And that is the language of Consumer Driven Healthcare.  A brief expose' of her positions are outlined in the December 22 edition of Business Week and worth a read.   If time is tight, keep reading below for a summary and maybe even a few thoughts of our own (maybe).

Regina Herzlinger is a professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and she advocates neither government nor employer based healthcare.  Branded a heretic by some, she advocates a free and open healthcare market that is totally focused on you and me.  Also known as the patient and the consumer.

Her position is that there should be total transparency in the healthcare space.  In otherwords if doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies all had to compete openly in the marketplace for yours and my healthcare dollars (that we controlled) we would have economic environment not unlike the retail sector.  Those that provide us with health related services would compete like crazy, drive prices down, and we could make our own and hopefully better decisions about our healthcare.

In her model, the government's role is really four-fold:  mandated (a word that frightens me generally) coverage for every American, strict oversight to ensure fairness in terms of price/coverage, a national database of pricing and quality, and lastly tax breaks and subsidies depending on income.

She agrees with the folks at the Gradock Bulletin, that HSAs are not the silver bullet to healthcare reform, but rather part of the solution.  We believe an important part.

Sounds good, no?  Here's the rub.  Those who disagree with Ms. Herzlinger do so because they think we are too stupid to fend for ourselves.  That there is no way we could possibly sift through all the choices and make informed healthcare decisions.  To that I respond, ptuey.   We go to the grocery store, there are tens of thousands of items, all with different prices, different sizes and with different nutritional values.  It is a virtually transparent marketplace and because it is, we are able to make informed decisions.  We are neither chimps, nor chumps.  Education, information, transparency can lead us to meaningful reform.