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Saving the system: Mickey Herbert views the market-based system as America's only way to go.

Article Excerpt
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As far back as 1971, Mickey Herbert has believed that a market-based system of healthcare delivery is the only option for America. At the time, Herbert was involved in research that set the stage for the passage of the HMO Act of 1973, the pivotal legislation that prompted the epic shift from indemnity to managed care models.

Now the president and CEO of ConnectiCare, a commercial and Medicare Advantage insurer based in Farmington, Conn., Herbert still believes the market-based system is right for America. In fact, ConnectiCare is organized in such a way to allow Herbert time to hit the streets to educate policy-makers, entrepreneurs and big business on the need for maintaining a healthcare delivery system that allows for innovation, competition and market forces.

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"I will have, by the time I'm retired, 40 years of experience in this business, and believe me, I learned in 1971 that this market-based system is the best way to go--it's the only way we can go in America," he says. "So we've got to do it, and we've got to get it right. It's who I am. It's what I am. If there's going to be a legacy for me, I'd like people to think that I really did convince them that we shouldn't scrap the healthcare delivery system that we have in America, and that we should concentrate on fixing it instead of throwing it out and adopting a European model."

Market History

Herbert says his earliest mentor and philosophical influence was Paul Ellwood, MD, a researcher who is credited with creating the phrase "health maintenance organization." Dr. Ellwood was a pediatric neurologist who founded a national policy research institute that later became InterStudy. Herbert was the institute's vice president, and there he helped create the "Health Maintenance Strategy"--a proposal for a new U.S. healthcare system, in which private plans would compete to deliver higher and higher quality at increasingly affordable prices. That proposal became embedded into the groundbreaking HMO Act of 1973.

As a result of that act, the federal government began funding hundreds of HMO startups, all of them not-for-profit. Herbert leveraged his...

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