Healthcare Expert Resident Grant Bagley’s Presentation (With Colleague) to the Trump Team Last Year

Grant Bagley is a longstanding leader here at Collington with achievements than I can remember, but they include law and medical degrees.  As he explains below, he and a colleague (Wes Chapman) were invited last summer to make presentation to senior Trump staff on how to deal with our healthcare problems.  In the paper below, they put their very best foot forward.

Hey, President Trump,

To fix the Healthcare mess, listen to the dog that didn’t bark!

Dr. Grant Bagley & Wes Chapman

July 4, 2017

Preface: This is the first in an occasional series of articles looking at selected healthcare policy issues best addressed by the famous conundrum of the “Dog that didn’t bark” in the 1892 collection of short stories, Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The story “Silver Blaze,” is a mystery about the disappearance of a famous racehorse and the murder of the horse’s trainer. Sherlock Homes solves the mystery in part by recognizing that no one he spoke to in his investigation remarked that they had heard barking from the watchdog during the night – the absence of the expected is the clue to the mystery. We propose, and hope to convince the reader, that to solve the mess unfolding around the repeal/collapse of ACA (Obamacare), don’t listen to the howls of partisans and media. Instead look for policy solutions in the silence – where the dogs don’t bark.

In the late spring of last year, just before the Republican convention, we were invited to present to the Trump campaign (at the Cabinet Secretary level) regarding the best healthcare policy for the Republic under a Republican Administration. This was a treat to put together, and a fun presentation to make – it’s not often that you can imagine a White House beholden to nobody, with a clear but inchoate mandate for change. And we were proposing the framework to contain and direct that change – for over $3.0 trillion in annual expenditures.

Our initial premise was pretty simple, US healthcare is the most expensive among comparable nations, with the lowest quality. In simple terms, we spend 17% of our GDP for healthcare, and rank dead last among 11 comparable countries in terms of quality. Our suggestion was pretty simple, let’s take a look at what these other folks are doing and learn from it.

Here is the full Barking-Bagley paper.  Simple, crisp, clean and right.