How to Cure Our Own Healthcare

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?

Corporate Sustainability and HPI

Last week I was at one of San Diego’s largest employers, a huge global high tech company.  I was watching a training program called the Corporate Athlete that pioneered 30 years ago by a renowned sports psychologist, Dr. Jim Loehr.  Recently Jim’s business The Human Performance Institute has exploded with demand from the world’s biggest companies like Proctor and Gamble and Dell.  Why?  Because Jim teaches everything we forget and most of what we need to know to live our best life.  When I say everything I mean stuff you’d not expect to hear in the work place.  His staff of exercise psychologists and nutritionist tell corporate work warriors how they can get more restful sleep, achieve fitness without dieting, and to keep moving to increase blood flow to the brain.  Companies are anxious to pay for this because companies need creative, collaborative people creating new value in a world full of me-too products and me-too people.

Most companies are lumbering bureaucracies full of fear clinging to the status quo.  Their way of growing is to work people to death.  What Jim Loehr points out is that fatigued, stressed-out, over weight employees are irritable, risk prone and problem-focused.  All the things we don’t want.  Companies full of employees that are well rested, fit, and feel their job aligns with their values are hives of innovation.  These are companies that will grow in this economic downturn.  They will grow because their employees will re-invent the value they offer customers.

So there I sat with 40 engineers.  These very smart people are lapping up the kool-aid.  They are shocked their employer is paying for a program that partially takes place in a gym.  It turns out when senior leaders become advocates for the personal health and satisfaction of their employees, their employees recommit to their employer.  It’s pretty simple.  How do you create a sustainable workplace?  Advocate that people live and work at a sustainable pace.