The Red Brick Times

Facts on the Cost of Health Care by the National Coalition on Health Care:
"Experts agree that our health care system is riddled with inefficiencies, excessive administrative expenses, inflated prices, poor management, and inappropriate care, waste and fraud.
"A recent study by Harvard University researchers found that ... 68 percent of those who filed for bankruptcy had health insurance. In addition, the study found that 50 percent of all bankruptcy filings were partly the result of medical expenses."

The National Coalition on Health Care (NCHC) was founded in 1990. It is an inside-the-beltway organization with a populist/humanist manifesto, trying to be all things healthy for all members. Its Membership List includes business (GE, Verizon, Giant Food), workers (Teamsters, Electrical Workers, Actors), health care (Blue Shield, Kaiser), educators (California, New York and Ohio State Teachers' Retirement Systems) and religion (Presbyterians, Methodists, Catholics, Salvation Army).

I looked through Google returns for the NCHC. None had critical reviews or analyses of the group. Most contained the same lauditory language found in the NCHC's own press releases. I tentatively conclude that the NCHC seems to be a traditional lobbying group, well-connected inside the Washington power elite, and doing nothing inflammitory to date. So they may be a partial cause of the slow pace of change. Certainly, they want to preserve the status quo for all of their member organizations (means - "Cut our expenses/increase our income without cutting our power or control"). I don't think that the unions, pension funds, health care providers, or religious sects would contemplate disbanding, merging or fundamentally changing if in doing so, they could substantially reduce healt care costs for their teeming masses.

And, once again, that refocuses on self-examination. Would any of us? Would we live in different places, work at different types of jobs, voluntarily restrict our use of cars, electricity, travel, or opportunities for the sake of "better" health care? Would we engage in daily community mass exercise sessions, as seen at some Japanese companies? Would we cheerfully march to weekly "volunteer" jobs because it was a Federal law, and as a partial offset to paying taxes? Would you join the neighborhood road-mending gang to resurface the streets in your area instead of writing to the City Council to complain? Would you shovel snow out to the middle of the street in front of your dwelling to clear the roads? In your improved physical condition from the community mass exercise sessions, such work would be less onerous. And the most common response is probably "Of course I will, but not unless everyone else does too." Things change most often by nibbles and not by massive strokes from above. Massive strokes are resented and resisted, while nibbles give time for thought and acceptance. Let me see, what can I nibble today?
Posted 10:30 AM by Andy (0) comments

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