How to Cure Our Own Healthcare
February 6, 2009 by ThoughtRocket
I know the title of this blog is overly ambitious. But it’s undeniable that America’s health care system is on life support. I just came from a private meeting of Johnson & Johnson “wellness” executives that was inspiring.
Johnson & Johnson is one of those all-too-rare companies that is serious about their social responsibilities and have been for over 100 years. Yes, I know they are not perfect. What $65 billion enterprise is? But their annual direct contributions to human health exceed a half a billion dollars. Once more, their famous operating credo points customers first, employees second, community third, and share holders last. It was written in 1943 by their only shareholder, General Robert Woods Johnson. Remember, they took Tylenol off all the store shelves in the world when a few capsules were found laced with poison in a deadly prank. What other company has handled a recall with such concern for our safety?
Well let’s just say J & J is serious about making our wellness and healthy aging a big strategic priority for the next 150 years. They talk in 50-year terms, which is breathtaking in an age where most executives think long-term means a week or 10 days. Yes of course they plan to make good health a profitable business. That’s what makes their plans sustainable. It’s what I call socially strategic leadership…business that makes money by benefiting humanity. That’s the good news.
The challenge is that American health care is completely compromised by the intense lobbying culture in Washington. Today we have over 200 ex-congressmen lobbying for their special interest instead of our common good (See Stuck in the Revolving Door in the Washington Post). When asked why lobbying had become such a huge business in Washington, Robert G. Kaiser, former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee said, “There’s just so damn much money in it.” That’s not funny. Lobbyists actually write many of the bills that become laws. For instance, they wrote the drug Medicare benefit passed by George Bush’s congress in 2003, which made it illegal for the government to negotiate with drug companies on the price of the drugs Medicare now pays for. It’s called corporate welfare, reverse wealth transfer, or as Jack Abramoff called it, “legalized bribery.”
So, where has this gotten us? In very deep yogurt, that’s where. The U.S. spends 50% more on health care per person than the next highest spending country (Norway). We have the fastest growth in health care spending in the world. Yet we have below-average life expectancy, the largest number of uninsured in any industrialized nation, higher infant mortality here than in Poland and 3 times higher than in Japan, and a growing obesity epidemic caused by our lifestyles.
So who’s going to fix this? Well, Tom Daschle was presented to us as the most knowledgeable man in America to fix our system. But it turns out his part of this Washington D.C. culture of I’m-so-special I-don’t-have-to-pay-my-taxes. Damn. (Unlike Rush Limbaugh I am rooting my brains out for President Obama to succeed. But please. Paying one’s taxes is a very low standard for anyone who’s going to serve in our nation’s cabinet to reach. It’s disappointing the corrupting influence of Washington has made even that standard too high for some of our best potential public servants.)
Our health care problems are astoundingly complex. Solutions are beyond government alone or the so-called free market to solve. Greed, incompetence, demographics, and complexity are causing costs to skyrocket while causing massive unnecessary suffering. So what’ the best thing we can do? Well, first, today begin to make the changes in our lifestyles that are known to promote our and our family’s health. If you could do just one thing, what would it be? Get moving.
According to Dr. Jim Loehr of the Human Performance Institute of Johnson & Johnson, if Americans just got our large muscles (legs) moving more, we would begin to get healthier. I know a business leader who lost 30 pounds over the past 18 months simply by wearing a ped-o-meter on his belt to make sure he walks a total of 5 miles a day. Usually he does half of this on a 40-minute walk in the morning or evening. The rest he does by moving throughout the day. He takes the stairs, walks to other people’s offices and takes every other opportunity to walk he can. The payoff Loehr says is that getting moving changes our blood chemistry, our muscle tone, our strength, our energy, our blood oxygen levels and jacks up our motivation to make other changes with our diet, our sleep, and our stress resilience. I was going to suggest a few more things we could do to reduce our personal vulnerability to our broken health care system but let me stop with this. Get moving. Today. We’ll all be healthier for it.
So what do you think of our health care mess? Obama’s blunder with Tom Daschle? Your personal advice on how we can live more healthy?
I think Obama is missing an opportunity by doing things in a piecemeal manner-or maybe I’m just too impatient.
We need a huge national effort started and supported by this administration. I remember back in the 60’s (when obesity was not prevalent-we had one obese person out of a high school class of over 400) President Kennedy sponsored a national fitness program in the schools. We need something like this.
One thing the schools could do is cut down on busing kids. Throughout my education, I had more than mile walks to school (twice a day-went home for lunch)-starting in kindergarten. We did a lot of socializing during these walks-plus all the exercise. Two benefits plus decreased costs.
Obama’s pre-inauguration health care forums were great. I’m waiting to see what comes out of these. We definitely need to control costs and do something about insurance companies to start.
I am so glad to see personal responsibility addressed prominently in Will Marre’s blog. I grew up in a household where my parents overate and did not exercise. They didn’t encourage us kids to be active. Today, they have health problems, but I don’t and neither do my kids or husband. Why? Because we don’t abdicate responsibility for our food choices to restaurants or food manufacturers. We don’t blame “others” for fooling us into becoming obese. We don’t come up with endless excuses for not exercising. Instead, we do what health experts have been saying for decades. It’s pretty simple: eat lots of fruits and vegetables, eat meats and fried foods sparingly, eat saturated fats sparingly, and build exercise into your routine. Different aspects of the message may have changed over the years, but basically it’s the same message we’ve all heard for years and years and years. Move more and eat more veggies. We follow it. We’re healthy and thin and it’s not just genetics. We go ride bikes together. We hike miles together. We swim. We look at food labels together. We talk about the foods we eat and their good and bad aspects. We cook dinner from scratch. If only more people would do this, the total need for healthcare would drop and some of the bigger pressures on the system would be removed. It’s not a solution, per se, but it would sure go a long way to alleviating many of the problems with the system.
America’s health problems stem from both poor private decisions and poor public policy.
Perhaps the majority of preventable premature death/disability in America is a result of two problems: (1) tobacco addiction and (2) overconsumption of foods (or food ingredients) at the top of the food pyramid. Dramatic reductions in these behaviors will yield remarkable results with little or no cost.
http://www.pnhp.org articulates the case for single-payer national health insurance (and a rational plan for implementing it) better than I ever could. Covering everyone for all necessary medical, Rx, dental, vision, rehab, and long-term/end-of-life care is a moral imperative we should embrace, not fear.
In addition to the arguments made at http://www.pnhp.org, a national health plan likely would be a catalyst for other healthy developments. Two examples (a) the US allows 5 times the lead in drinking water than the EU (b) the US permits the sale of aluminum-surfaced cookware {aluminum is linked to Alzheimer’s disease} where the EU doesn’t. When the taxpayer is on the hook for the adverse health effects of other public policies… non-health public policies tend to change in favor of better public health.
YOU HAVE TOUCHED A REAL SORE SPOT WITH THIS BLOG. The first thing I want to say is that HEALTH and MEDICAL are not interchangeable words. There are two industries: disease and wellness. There is no government, doctor, insurance company or any person who can bestow “health” on someone.
Medical insurance does not create health. “Health insurance” is the result of a person taking individual responsibility which includes learning how their body works and then investing their hard earned money only on things that support health/wellness which includes work and lifestyles that are soul-based and life-enhancing.
The current medical paradigm does not understand anything about bio-energetic wellness, the role of thoughts/feelings in illness, or the role “scientists and doctors for hire” play in our medical system. Most tests are “marketing tools” for drug companies, most diagnosis are “legally correct” to protect insurance companies and other institutions BUT not in the best interest of WE THE PEOPLE.
Please don’t get me wrong…. I believe in knowing what’s going on with my body and getting tests like iridology, hair analysis, kinesiology, etc. I believe in paying for care and maintenance of my wonderful body AND I know that my body is not a bogey man, who out of the clear blue will manifest some kind of horrible illness. I have made my body the foundation of my financial portfolio, have a loving partnership it, respect it’s innate wisdom, and make sure I’m a EMPOWERED energy manager. I refuse to buy into FEAR tactics and therefore experience a FREEDOM that few Americans enjoy. AND … that’s all I have to say right now.
Let’s advocate personal responsibility first, that is a major root cause of health problems and the health care system in America.
Next let’s take a highly proactive and preventive approach to health and healthcare.
Next, lets make it illegal to advertise drugs, prescription or otherwise on our public TV and radio stations. I see this advertising as another problematic root cause of health problems.
Next, lets reverse the law with regard to the Medicare Prescription Drug program and demand (not just allow) that the Government negotiate the prices with the drug companies without any interference from lobbyists.
Next, let’s compare our healthcare to the best programs in the world and take only the very best ideas to begin sculpting our plan, again with no lobbyist interference. By Beginning with the End in Mind we will know where we are trying to go and can then develop the specific strategies and tactics to get there.
Washington’s typical answer of throwing our money at it will not solve the problems.
I don’t know about you but frankly I am fed up with Washington doing anything for me because they never have a plan and are the puppets of the lobbyists and only care about themselves and not their constituents.
For instance, with all the thousands and tens of thousands of jobs being cut every day, how many people in Washington have lost their jobs? How many in Washington should lose their jobs, ALL OF THEM!!
We do need change, REAL CHANGE by real people like you and me and not the egomaniac, business as usual crowd inside the beltway.
There are many points made by the commenters above with which I totally agree, but I need to address some of the unknown assumptions in Will’s initial piece to get my own point accross.
I can appreciate the fact that Johnson & Johnson may have made a paradigm shift from that followed by most American companies with respect to its shareholders, but I must ask what “socially strategic leadership” really means and entails. If it is the beginning of corporate American truly putting its own interests in allignment with those of the public which they serve and the earth from which they garner the resources to serve that public, then I am all for the new “strategy”. If, on the other hand, it is a strategy that permits it to move forward with business as usual but cloaked in new terms and concepts that appeal to those of us who would replace the word “strategy” with “responsibility”, then perhaps the shift is more fiction than fact.
I have not researched J & J to see if they really walk the talk, but to make that assessment, here are the questions I would ask. First, do they sell products under the name of health and wellness that provide short-term relief of symptoms but deliver the relief in part through known toxins that create more difficulty in the long-term? For every manufactured means of addressing symptoms, there is at least one or more natural remedies that can actually relieve the same symptoms and go toward a permanent cure, not short term relief. Have they begun to look for these products and to put them into their product mix? These products not only help the customer more dramatically in the long run, but they are also usually more cost-effective.
SEcond, do they invest their profits in companies that will provide green, sustainable, life-enhancing products or services, or do they invest their money in more “sure thing” returns, with companies that in the long run do more harm than good. That is, do they invest in companies that are helping to take down the rainforrest? Do they invest in companies that have “paid to pollute” and thus are still very much a part of the problem? Do they invest in companies (such as pharmaceuticals) which are perpetuating bandages instead of cures to an ever-aging public which, on its own, will destroy the current medical paradigm unless we a shift to prevention and a different way delivery?
Finally, do thier affiliates and subsidiaries also follow the J & J model of corporate responsible leadership? When those things happen, then we will not have to depend upon the government to determine how to move us toward a more preventative and healthful society, corporate America will actually begin forming the mold without government intervention or direction, which in the long run may be more beneficial to the J & J’s of the world.
When the big companies such as J & J actually vote with their dollars, products and approach, as well as their “human performance institutes”, then I will believe they are truly willing to allign with the “socially responsible leadership” they seem to want us to believe exists. “Socially strategic leadership” may be the same as “socially responsible leadership” but I would not make that conclusion until those questions are answered in the affirmative.
I am not advocating that J & J give up what they do best in one fell swoop to be what I would deem corporately responsible, but that they act as a leader and truly be a model of what can be. If they slowly started changing over product line and investment areas, (assuming for argument’s sake that they are not yet to that point) a true shift could happen without necessarily affecting corporate profits at all. It is my experience that when EVERYONE wins (such as 1. educating the consumer and giving him or her access to that which brings true health and wellness at a reasonable price, or 2. providing green start-up corporations that create sustainable, alternative fuels or organic food or purified water or desalinized water or any of a number of things that are beneficial to the public and the planet) while the corporation still makes a profit, then the economics take care of themselves.
I challenge J & J and other corporate giants to consider moving in that direction. I have a strong belief that if they did, they would actually be more profitable in the long run while benefitting and sustaining all life on this planet. What better strategy could possibly exist?
If you haven’t seen it, check out “Sick Around the World” a PBS documentary from April of 2008. Go to: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld. It is all free.
You can watch the film, read interviews and even print a transcript. Lots to see and learn and all about Healthcare in other countries. A timely subject for us Americans to get highly educated about before we let our politicians run the train off the tracks again.
Steve (Feb 6) makes many good points in his post. I agree 100%, but would like to add two more suggestions.
We need legal reform. Every piece of equipment, supplies, facilities as well as physicians costs significantly more because of litigation. Whereas I agree that consumer protection is necessary, I think this protection would be much better provided by arbitration rather than high cost litigation.
Also, hospitals and insurance companies used to be primarily nonprofit. This reduced costs by less duplication of facilities, equipment and services as well as no corporation profits, huge management salaries, etc. HMOs and competition have dramatically failed to lower medical costs-they raised them!
Good points all around. My thoughts are that we need the following type of program:
1. Agree as a country that citizens get some basic preventive medical as a right and on the other extreme are protected from bankruptcy by a huge medical event or accident.
2. Understand that the costs between basic preventive and the bankruptcy type event are the responsibility of the individual.
3. Offer a universal national health insurance for all citizens similar to medicare for basic care that would require “skin in the game” for the individual to do their best to use the dollars wisely and take care of their health.
4. Allow private industry to offer enhanced insurance to cover above the universal national health insurance for those who wanted to pay more for more coverage for more optional type of medical issues.
5. Understand as a nation, we are responsible for our own health to a large degree and between the national preventive care provided by the government and the protection on the high end bankruptcy type medical event, we must ration health care.
The one thing that keeps me disciplined to eat right, avoid stress, and exercise at least three times a week is this phrase that I try to live by:
If I don’t take care of my body, where am I going to live?