Partnering with citizens to reform Wisconsin health care: a report of the first citizen congress.

13 all. In this context, it is something of an irony that thousands of deeply appreciated high-quality acts of medical care occur daily in America. These observations and concerns led the Wisconsin Medical Society (Society) to commission a Task Force on Professionalism and subsequently the first Citizen Congress on Health Care (congress). Inspiration for the congress comes from the late University of Wisconsin-Madison Sociology Professor Odin W. Anderson, who challenged organized medicine with the following words: “In a country where political power relates strongly to money and education, you physicians have only begun to use your potential. If you would then use your power for the good of health care and your patients, citizens would quickly join you and the potential for positive change would be huge.”1 In recent decades, as private and government health insurance paid increasing portions of fast-growing health care costs, they understandably attempted to control costs through management practices. Investors took notice of available profits. Citizens and physicians have ceded control to the point of feeling powerless; the enterprise seems to have run amok; and virtually no one is happy with the result except for some investors and health care executives. Professor Anderson believed citizens and physicians must together return to the center of health care policy and management, balancing strong financial interests. He foresaw a political coalition of citizens and physicians, working altruistically to accomplish goals that neither could alone. He believed citizens and physicians would have to recover a long-lost consciousness of price and value and take back responsibility for resource utilization. He predicted insurance companies, after initial resistance, would welcome the change. With that in mind, the congress was developed to build a strong political coalition of Wisconsin citizens and physicians for the purpose of designing and promoting health services satisfactory for all.