“This outline is the culmination of months of deliberation, and is the first concrete step toward reforming our health care system to reign in skyrocketing costs that threaten to bankrupt our families and government.

The best patient care and highest quality outcomes should be the only influences in medical decision making. We must cut waste and unintended incentives that drive up costs, encourage innovation and access to cutting-edge treatments, and substantially address prevention and wellness toward the goal of reducing the incidence of chronic disease. The Cleveland Clinic and the Mayo Clinic serve as examples of high quality, low cost, highly integrated medical practices that are already using these strategies with very good and efficient outcomes and should serve as models as we move forward.

The United States spends more per capita on health care than any country in the world but our outcomes are dismal and getting worse. A physician-driven, highly transparent, voluntary, not-for-profit public health plan option is necessary to truly reform our healthcare system and today we move closer to that goal.”