ONE OF MY SONS JUST ASKED ME: "WHERE DO YOU STAND ON THE SENATE'S HEALTH CARE BILL?"

MY ANSWER: 

This remains an ill-conceived, cruel piece of legislation. 

It should be rejected. 

The reduction in coverage (20MM plus) makes it inconceivable that we would put this in place.

It fails to deal with the cost issues that have to be addressed at the root cause level (e.g. cost of drugs; multiple profit centers picking up $$; lack of consumer visibility into true costs, etc. ). It fails to study other health care systems which are affording close to universal health care at a cost  40%  BELOW ours. 

The process followed to do this, after 7 years of seeing the flaws of Obamacare, is tragic.

There are two premises which will ultimately have to be and will be accepted:

1. Everyone should have health insurance. Everyone. We don't allow people to opt in or out of Social Security. Or having automobile insurance. It is an issue of the national interest, not just the individual. 

2. Providing quality health care is a Right, just like education is and safety is. For everyone and it is the government's responsibility to provide it. Like Social Security. For the National Interest. 

PUTTING MY P&G HAT ON: A FACT BASED PATH TO A SUSTAINABLE HEALTH CARE PLAN

If I put my Procter & Gamble hat on and assess this challenging subject, there are two things that we aren’t doing which P&G would be doing:

 

1.     We would examine what the outcomes are today in the United States compared to other countries which we know are achieving lower costs, broader coverage and strong health outcomes.  

 

It is striking and hopefully instructive to look around the world and see so many developing countries, including Canada to our north, providing close to universal coverage, with costs much lower than our own (10% vs. 17% of GDP), and health outcomes, in terms of duration and quality of life, equal or better than our own.

 

Within our own country, I would benchmark Massachusetts, which I understand is providing 97% coverage.  I don’t know what the costs are, but I would be looking at that and any other states which can be benchmarks for learning.

 

2.     I would break down with great specificity what the differences are in cost between the United States and those countries (Canada, Europe, Japan, etc.) which have significantly lower costs.  What explains the difference? I am sure a big part but by no means all are higher drug costs. There are also the profits being made by companies in the distribution chain. 

 

 

The type of benchmark comparisons I’ve referred to above would yield important learning. We are failing to do the obvious.