Problem & Solution

A National Crisis in Health Care

Americans already spend over $4 trillion per year on Health Care. That’s nearly twice as much as other industrialized OECD nations, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), but we live sicker and die younger. Why is that, and can it get any worse?

John Green, in the following YouTube video, describes the complexity of the healthcare problem in just 8 minutes, covering much of what Steven Brill wrote about in his 38-page TIME magazine special report, Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills are Killing Us. Hold onto your hats, because there’s a lot to cover in such little time.

Unlike a Health care system, our nation’s Sick care system profits when we’re sick, and the incentive is to keep us as paying customers; so the system works to manage disease and treat symptoms while other parts of government subsidize agribusiness and processed foods and ignores poverty and environmental contamination.

All of this contributes to our high costs, which will get much worse as 10,000 Baby Boomers a day reach age 65, retire and expect more technical miracles. They’re already starting to take Social Security and will soon increase the healthcare burden dramatically, because of the way we provide care today. The senior population is expected to climb from 49 million today to 83 million by 2050, so a dramatic new approach is needed, and its urgency is critical. See statistics.

Modern Solutions for Home Health

As our population ages, we must address these rising costs by creating personal, networked, home-based care options and move at least 50% of health care services from hospitals, nursing homes, and assisted care facilities to homes. As Intel’s Eric Dishman says, We need a “Going to the Moon” type of effort to reduce costs with technology solutions that enable home health care and aging in place.

But as solutions and care options evolve, how will individuals learn about what’s available? This will depend largely on a community of individuals sharing experiences with the new home health care technologies and services. That’s what mHealthTalk.com provides – a way to plug into Modern Health Care options.

Health Care as a Team Sport

When Eric Dishman was in college, doctors told him he had 2 to 3 years to live. That was a long time ago. One rectified diagnosis and a transplant later, Dishman puts his personal experience and his expertise as a leading medical tech specialist together to suggest some bold ideas for reinventing healthcare — by putting the patient at the center of a treatment team. (Filmed at TED@Intel)

So What’s the Fix?

To those in Congress who benefit from an immensely profitable medical industrial complex that funds their campaigns, and work on their behalf to getting health care even harder and more expensive, I say, “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” Check out my article promoting a single-payer system that provides universal coverage and healthcare for all.

If our nation were to just to become “average” and match what the other rich nations spend for their better outcomes, we’d save over $2 trillion per year. Contrast that with the “omnibus” $1.7 trillion budget Congress recently passed to fund the government for 9 months, until 9/30/2023. That comes to about $2.25 trillion for a full year, including $858 billion for national defense.

With so much at stake, the first trillion-dollar election is closer than you think, because the medical cartel will resist. But it seems inevitable that health reform will happen eventually. It must, because our aging population under the current system will bankrupt the nation.