With all the new plans swirling around for health care reform, the most important one lies with every citizen, taxpayer, patient, ordinary American.

Consumer choice—yours and each of ours—is the solution for so much of our problem.

Here are 5 choices Americans should make for healthcare reform:

First and foremost—personal medical prevention must become an individual responsibility and not the default responsibility of the federal government after it is much too late—for every American.  This reform solution should come in the form of cradle-to-grave prevention education focused on individual health choices and known solutions, integrated with health information technology (HIT) supplying national data around norms, rates and solutions combined with and compared to personal data records for each individual.

When our national gas pricing crisis hit just a year back, Americans quickly learned the rate variations nationally and regionally, and now individuals from each generation know the costs and effects of gas prices on them individually. Another crisis with new, helpful transparency is that of the effects and vulnerabilities of too-high and/or risky mortgage rates. If similar national norm and variation data for the top 6 preventable diseases, like diabetes, smoking, etc., were personalized and prioritized for each citizen, healthy personal decision-making at younger and younger ages can become the norm.

Second—personal choices in health insurance coverage must be central in our policy reform. Most all of us agree that all Americans should be covered and have access to health insurance coverage. But there is no one-size-fits-all coverage that will allow competitive pricing and high quality care and outcomes to emerge as the new value proposition for each family and citizen.

President Obama is right in not abandoning employer-benefit coverage, but each worker should have more choices—not fewer—in deciding where and with whom those dollars are spent.

Tying all local options together in a regional health information exchange (HIE) for consumers, employers, and providers alike will encourage the kinds of personal options and choices that individuals need to be responsible decision makers. On a national level the loosely proposed health insurance exchange may bring much needed cost-coverage transparency to plans, benefits and pricing all across the nation.

Third—personal choices in care delivery and simple, cost-effective solutions should become easy and readily available for our citizen consumers. Look at Wal-Mart for an illustration—when Americans are given lots of choices with competitive prices, and given responsibilities for making good decisions, they can find good value and drive down costs. Driven to compete with CVS Minute Clinics and maintain their own employees, Wal-Mart is pioneering hundreds of clinic locations to deliver personalized care that is integrated with the local hospitals and doctors with patient-personalized data and information.

With Wal-Mart data showing that 55 percent of its in-store clinic patients are uninsured, their co-branded clinics are focused on:

• Treatment of common ailments such as sore throats, sinus infections, earaches, and bladder infections.
• Preventive care, including health screenings, medical tests, vaccinations, and basic physical exams.
• Standard electronic medical records for clinic patients that eliminate the need for paper records via an electronic records platform employed by all new clinics operating in Wal-Mart stores.
• Patient care delivered by licensed, certified providers who diagnose, treat, and when appropriate, prescribe medications.

This kind of service will add individual value because it will link personalized, relevant information though HIT-HIE. With technology today, patients needn’t sit in high-rent waiting rooms for many of the call-back appointments when they can be connected to the same doctors and records online with secure, personalized records. Too many have been crowded out of affordable care delivery options entirely.

Fourth—individuals should be automatically offered generic and brand options in selecting prescription drugs. This market-driven option should be prevalent in every prescription for every patient in the US.

A Wharton study showed the average prescription drug cost a third less in Canada where generic alternatives are mainstream. According to the Congressional Budget Office, generic drugs save consumers an estimated $8 to $10 billion a year at retail pharmacies.  Even more billions are saved when hospitals use generics.

In America, this option should be one’s individual choice—not that solely of the government or the doctor. Again, new HIT electronic prescribing allows point-of-sale consumer decision making for safe, proven generic equivalents. Currently only 6 percent of scripts are electronic though 20 percent of providers have the capacity to e-prescribe. Ask for e-scripts next time your doc picks up a paper pad.

Fifth and finally—choose quality.  Many Americans have demanded the highest healthcare quality for generations, leading our reputation as a healthcare leader to be that of the highest quality in the world. But it is the out-of-control costs of that high quality that has also squeezed many, many citizens out of the system, resulting in the “haves” and the “have nots” of health care.

A one-size-fits-all rationing of “average” quality is simply not an option for Americans.

While the digital information age has brought efficiency and higher quality to many of our industry sectors domestically and globally, HIT has not caught up with the “modern” medical office. When you see the paper file rooms as you walk down the halls toward your patient exam room, you are witnessing hoards of minimally utilized records. While your personal information is private, it is not used to its potential by other providers, causing you more repeat visits, redundant scan costs, and potentially conflicting information.

In order to advance high quality AND lower costs, we must integrate HIT and HIE to modernize the “modern” medical office. Personal medical, health, drug, coverage and prevention records should be on-line for every visit anywhere (called interoperability).

It will be through each citizen’s active participation in asking for and selecting the personalized value combination of quality, prevention, coverage, and competitive pricing that will allow innovation and competition to continue to raise quality standards while offering options in every price range.

Let’s all make personal choice a standard in our healthcare reform.