Health Insurance Reform - Where are the Creative Thinkers?
[8/31/07]
In a recent episode of the award winning TV series “Boston Legal” crusading attorney Alan Shore while delivering one of his famous closing statements on a case involving the problems with airline security Said “Why don’t we just call in the "Steve’s”. He was referring of course to Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and other famous probed solvers named “Steve”. It was a humorous jab and the lack of applying our nation’s most creative thinkers to solving simple problems. There seems to be the same lack of calling on the true entrepreneurs and forward thinkers to solve the ongoing affordable health insurance crisis in America.
A recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal said, “"Entrepreneurs avoid health care delivery because status quo providers, abetted by legislators and insurance companies, have made it virtually impossible for them to succeed. Unlike any other U.S. industry, consumers do not set prices, yet they provide all the money through taxes for government programs and foregone salaries for employer-provided benefits. A third party not only sets the prices but goes so far as to specify procedures and even the kinds of patients to be covered." This kind of almost dictatorial control of the health insurance market has traditionally made it immune to the normal forces that apply to most other businesses. This also has made health insurance immune to the kinds of innovation and growth that has been seen in hundreds of other industries.
Changes are being suggested, but basically we are approaching healthcare, and health insurance in this country the same way as 40 years ago. Show me any other industry where we are doing business the same way as 10 years ago, let alone a generation ago.
The Wall Street Journal piece went on to say that in order to attract “The Steve’s” and other entrepreneurial thinkers to solve health insurance issues we must, “…take back the "$2.2 trillion from the entrepreneur-suppressing status quo and allow consumers to reward those entrepreneurs who lower costs by improving health.”
Innovation is needed more in healthcare and health insurance perhaps than in any other industry, and it is also discouraged like in no other industry. Powerful lobbies and its many bureaucracies and regulations handcuff entrepreneurs, and stifle creative thinking.
Finally the movement towards consumers taking a more active roll in determining health insurance costs and health insurance benefits is a move toward releasing some of these barriers to real innovation. The idea of consumer driven health insurance plans may very well bring about some much-needed entrepreneurial thinkers to apply their ideas to the health insurance marketplace, let’s just hope some of them are named “Steve”.
A recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal said, “"Entrepreneurs avoid health care delivery because status quo providers, abetted by legislators and insurance companies, have made it virtually impossible for them to succeed. Unlike any other U.S. industry, consumers do not set prices, yet they provide all the money through taxes for government programs and foregone salaries for employer-provided benefits. A third party not only sets the prices but goes so far as to specify procedures and even the kinds of patients to be covered." This kind of almost dictatorial control of the health insurance market has traditionally made it immune to the normal forces that apply to most other businesses. This also has made health insurance immune to the kinds of innovation and growth that has been seen in hundreds of other industries.
Changes are being suggested, but basically we are approaching healthcare, and health insurance in this country the same way as 40 years ago. Show me any other industry where we are doing business the same way as 10 years ago, let alone a generation ago.
The Wall Street Journal piece went on to say that in order to attract “The Steve’s” and other entrepreneurial thinkers to solve health insurance issues we must, “…take back the "$2.2 trillion from the entrepreneur-suppressing status quo and allow consumers to reward those entrepreneurs who lower costs by improving health.”
Innovation is needed more in healthcare and health insurance perhaps than in any other industry, and it is also discouraged like in no other industry. Powerful lobbies and its many bureaucracies and regulations handcuff entrepreneurs, and stifle creative thinking.
Finally the movement towards consumers taking a more active roll in determining health insurance costs and health insurance benefits is a move toward releasing some of these barriers to real innovation. The idea of consumer driven health insurance plans may very well bring about some much-needed entrepreneurial thinkers to apply their ideas to the health insurance marketplace, let’s just hope some of them are named “Steve”.
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