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A MOTION approving the initial findings of the health advisory task force that endorse the county's direction to achieve quality of care and cost containment in King County's employee benefit plan.
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WHEREAS, national health care costs in this country are skyrocketing, approaching a national crisis, and
WHEREAS, King County is, like other employers in the region, state and nation, facing an urgent need to be able to provide affordable, available quality health care to employees while effectively containing the rise in employee health care costs, and
WHEREAS, in King County the employee benefits budget is expected to increase fifteen percent or more per year for at least the next five years representing an increase from $124 million per year spent on employee health benefits in 2003 to $249 million in 2008, and
WHEREAS, sixty-eight percent of the county's health care dollars are used by ten percent of its enrollees, and
WHEREAS, to address this critical issue, an internal county team conducted a focused and comprehensive research effort to seek best practice approaches from research institutes as well as actual applications. This research included a variety of sources, including, but not limited to: Epidemic of Care: A Call for Safer, Better, and More Accountable Health Care by George C. Halvorson, George J. Isham, MD; Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, Institute of Medicine; multiple studies and abstracts by the Center for Studying Health System Change, the National Committee for Quality Assurance and the Institute of Medicine; research and surveys conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Washington Business Group on Health and Watson Wyatt Worldwide; and initiatives elsewhere including San Diego, Michigan, Philadelphia, Minnesota, central Florida and Oregon, and
WHEREAS, the King County council's Fiscal Year 2004 adopted budget included a proviso requiring the executive to submit to the council for ...

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