Chris Herrington decided years ago that his reality was much more fun…
and he’s ready to tell you why.
Sit back and relax.
It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Health Dare
Nobody wants to pay more on anything. I mean, what’s the point? If you can buy it wholesale, why pay retail? If you can get the raw materials somewhere else, do it! If the labor is cheaper in another country, offshore or outsource that stuff, right? If you can turn a nickel into a dollar, why waste time learning a trade, getting an education, or offering a hand? The ways that we can use this nifty notion of getting the most out of something without really putting anything into it is so handy that it’s like the Swiss Army knife of modern ideas.
Like take the idea of modern insurance. Have you noticed how we are putting more and more into the system and getting less and less out of it? It’s our magical idea working its wisdom on our pocketbooks. The thing is, this notion is so rational that you want to buy into it lock, stock, and two smoking barrels! Let take the idea of how we can make the most of our business of selling insurance. Now, I don’t think that this has any correlation with what people who pay into the insurance can do, but it has a lot to do with why they are paying out the whazoo.
Let’s take the case of GE’s brilliant idea, Healthymagination.
http://www.healthymagination.com/
“Almost everyone wants to make healthier choices, but they don’t always know how. The amount of information available on wellness, nutrition and exercise is overwhelming, to say the least. Even when we do know how to improve our health, we often try to make sweeping changes or set goals that seem too daunting to reach.
Healthymagination is about becoming healthier, through the sharing of imaginative ideas and proven solutions. It goes beyond innovations in the fields of technology and medicine, celebrating the people behind these advancements. Seeking to build stronger relationships between patients and doctors, GE created Healthymagination to gather, share and discuss healthy ideas.
Because Healthymagination is about becoming healthier together, it takes the form of multiple projects that you can participate in, whether you’re looking to change your lifestyle or fine-tune your approach to health. Making healthy decisions should be easy…and fun.”
Now, doesn’t that sound exciting? I am sure that they have as a basic thought that if people were healthier, they would be less expensive to take care of! It’s the business approach. How can we see this in action though?
Let’s meet the board:
A Global Perspective. We’re talking to experts from all over the world.
Bill Brody, M.D.
President
Salk Institute for Biomedical Research
Lord Darzi
Professor the Lord Darzi of Denham PC, KBE
Tom Daschle
Former U.S. Senator
John de Souza
President and CEO of MedHelp
Bill Frist M.D.
Former U.S. Senator
Newt Gingrich
Former Speaker of the U.S.
House of Representatives
Mike Johns, M.D.
Chancellor, Emory University
Dr. Devi Prashad Shetty
Chairman of Narayana Hrudalaya, India’s Leading Cardiac Care Hospital located in Bangalore, India
Gerhard M. Sontheimer, M.D. Ph.D.
Chairman of Gesundheit Nordhessen Holding AG
Dr. Risa Strack
Member of the Board of Directors
Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Andy von Eschenbach, M.D.
Former Commissioner of U.S.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Gail Wilensky
Economist and Senior Fellow at Project HOPE
Ron Williams
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Aetna
And what is it that these lovely people have in mind? To put it into Mr. Gingrich’s own words, “When the American people have spoken, the businesses that succeed are the ones that provide their customers with the highest quality, lowest price, most consumer-friendly version of a product.” That sounds just wonderful, I’m sure.
And on GE’s side, they tout that they support this idea: “Our vision for the future is to enable a new “early health” model of care focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection and disease prevention. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $15 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 43,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information, visit www.gehealthcare.com.”
How will all of this happen?
Meltdown continues: GE offloads health insurance costs
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GE is forcing its 75,000 salaried U.S. employees and 8,000 retirees under the age of 65 to choose what’s known as a consumer-directed health plan, which includes deductibles that run as high as $4,000 a year.
Traditional plans, where employees pay higher premiums in exchange for predictable co-pays up front, are no longer available for salaried workers. One employee says his colleagues “are looking at this as a cut in pay.”
GE says the plan is being rolled out to make employees better health-care consumers and to coincide with its new “Healthymagination” strategy, a companywide initiative for health-care innovation.
While GE says its future cost savings are unclear, people with knowledge of the situation estimate it could save $1 billion over the next decade or so. With three tiers of premiums and deductibles, GE spokesperson Sue Bishop notes, employees still have options. “It’s not that different from their car insurance,” she says. “You get to choose the amount of your premium, and that determines the amount of your deductible.”
Okay, now we are being compared to cars!!!!
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_48/b4157030792130.htm
It’s only business!
“Ultimately, the patient needs to be responsible,” he said, showing off a handout he gives to patients that lists 30 complications from obesity, including diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and cancer. “We can provide the education that they need to stay healthy but it all depends on them.”
That’s the crux of preventive care: Physicians can educate patients on how to live a healthy lifestyle in the doctor’s office, but their success is determined solely by what the patient does at home.
Still, some suggest that investing in proven programs can pay dividends. A 2008 report by the Trust for America’s Health, a nonprofit group that focuses on disease prevention, found Texas could save $1 billion annually within five years if it invested $10 per person in community-based programs to increase physical activity, improve nutrition and prevent smoking and tobacco use.
Obesity is widely recognized as a major driver of healthcare expenditures, said Melissa Nitti, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.”
http://www.themonitor.com/articles/key-43083-costly-say.html
Okay, so let me get this straight. I need to prop up the economy by eating out, but I need to be very selective of what I eat. I can buy cigarettes, but I need to not smoke them. I need to use state regulated drugs that may cause serious health care risks, but the natural anti-nausea weed is illegal to me. If I get any more mixed signals, I will be too dizzy to stand up and I will need a power chair paid for by Medicare. I really can’t afford to go on since I need to go to my second job to pay for the higher premiums and higher co-pays. The reason this stuff is going up is not because of OBAMACARE. It is the initiative of those who control the costs. Who would that be?
1. We control how much we need. If we are healthier, then we will need less.
2. Businesses are not in the business of giving away anything, so they will lower costs at any cost.
3. It is in the best interest of everyone if your healthcare is costlier then.
4. Let’s check the final logic on this: If costs to consumers are high and businesses make more money off of giving less service, then consumers will self-advocate by applying methods of preventative healthcare. So, let’s then use this same logic on everyone: It is being pro-consumer to raise prices and lower quality of free healthcare so that it forces people to take care of themselves. I see; then it would not make sense to make having personal insurance mandatory.
5. Those who can’t afford primary care can then use the ER of the local county hospital, forcing tax payers to pay the local bill. This will certainly make for smaller Federal dollars going to take care of hospitals at the local level, won’t it?
6. Oh, that’s what we have right now, except on steroids, which are illegal and I certainly do not advocate them.
7. I want less Federal and Commercial/Corporate control of my dollars and life; if I lessen the amount of control the one has, only to turn that control over to the other, am I any better off? Do they want real control?
8. I have not used shaving cream or deodorant in over 30 years, and I have saved my body the wear and tear of all of those lousy chemicals for decades. No bug spray, no after or before products, and no hair spray. No smoking cigarettes or drinking coffee. No toxic soup for my soul, and now we are finding that it is what we can’t see that is really killing us. I must have been before my time; all that frivolous chemistry has not done me any harm.
9. What’s eating you? Being forced to pay for being addicted to the stuff they won’t outlaw by people who both sell the stuff and own the healthcare services that clean your clock?
• McDonald’s Corp. has warned federal regulators that it could drop its health insurance plan for nearly 30,000 hourly restaurant workers unless regulators waive a new requirement of the U.S. health overhaul.
The move is one of the clearest indications that new rules may disrupt workers’ health plans as the law ripples through the real world.
Trade groups representing restaurants and retailers say low-wage employers might halt their coverage if the government doesn’t loosen a requirement for “mini-med” plans, which offer limited benefits to some 1.4 million Americans.
The requirement concerns the percentage of premiums that must be spent on benefits
While many restaurants don’t offer health coverage, McDonald’s provides mini-med plans for workers at 10,500 U.S. locations, most of them franchised. A single worker can pay $14 a week for a plan that caps annual benefits at $2,000, or about $32 a week to get coverage up to $10,000 a year.
Last week, a senior McDonald’s official informed the Department of Health and Human Services that the restaurant chain’s insurer won’t meet a 2011 requirement to spend at least 80% to 85% of its premium revenue on medical care.
McDonald’s and trade groups say the percentage, called a medical loss ratio, is unrealistic for mini-med plans because of high administrative costs owing to frequent worker turnover, combined with relatively low spending on claims.
Okay, just to be absolutely clear:
“…….insurer won’t meet a 2011 requirement to spend at least 80% to 85% of its premium revenue on medical care.”
The new gold standard for a business is what Exxon made last quarter: 55%. If it is going to cost any amount of money to make any amount of money, then we need to stop doing business.
If we consider: What do you think it would cost to break even in today’s America, $50 per person per day? $25? If you worked 8 hours a day and ran a normal year, at minimum wage that would be 2080 X $7.50 = $15,600, and if we divide that by the day, that’s $42.73 per day. Not subtracting out transportation, food, housing, and clothing, where does that put the average American? Living with mom and dad. There is not a sense of entitlement here, but there is the need not to think of paying workers so little that they can’t afford to go to work.
What business is going to over-pay its employees? Everyone one of them would like to under-pay them in order to cut costs, for sure. There is a delicate balance between supporting the American dream and sucking the life blood out of our citizens. It is true that the market will pay what the market demands, but this may not come at the hands of businesses simply saying to themselves that workers deserve a larger cut of the profits. If we are not going to share what is made, then we force them to unionize and bargain. If we cut benefits enough, they will eventually not be able to work and make a living because costs are too high for them to work. We could just fire a pile of people and call that cost cutting so that it increases the bottom line, but that would be a repeat of two years ago. Those who want a tax break argue that at 90% no one will want to work. True enough. But he same is also true of working in the first place; if the pay is not high enough, who wants to work anyways? What’s the point of schooling if it does not help get a job? Why listen to your parents; they are doing so well.
Financially forcing the American public to take care of themselves sounds like an easy effort for those who can well afford good insurance. The ignorance tax, maybe. If you are so stupid that you could not get an education that would create enough wealth for you and your family then that is on you. Okay. If you don’t know any better than top eat junk food and you have to have 6,000 calories a day, then die of a heart attack, you moron! If you were smart enough to be able to maneuver control over a population of workers and then sucked them dry of their labor and then fired them when it came time to pull in your belt, good for you.
The warning was that this is the way that capitalism works. Adam Smith said it might happen. Marx said it would happen. We are watching it happen right in front of our eyes. When people become less important than the businesses they support, it is time to stop supporting those businesses. In the mean time, stop smoking, lose weight, and do more free exercise. In the end all you are going to have is your health, or what’s left of it.
runningturtle87
Having completed 32 years of public school service, Chris Herrington lives, with his wife, in Appleby, Texas, and his writing consists of blogging and essay writing concerning an array of topics including education, mediation, self-development, and human interests. He teaches at the Martin School of Choice, plays racquetball, and enjoys his job.
Chris Herrington can be reached at herrington@everythingnac.com
