Are our elected leaders chasing the wrong healthcare dream?...

Perhaps our elected leaders are chasing the wrong “system aim”...  The white paper Hospital Operating System - Unleashing Throughput Potential references the importance of system aim, an idea popularized by Deming. What if our leaders altered their approach and pursued affordable delivery of care rather than coverage as our system aim for healthcare? Would we be taking a different course of action?...



The danger of a political campaign, in my mind, is that personal preference and an ability to persuade can over shadow the basics and fundamental logic. Furthermore, once you have campaigned for something, an “in-flight” course change can been interpreted as weakness or perceived by the campaigner as an unacceptable mental construct. Finkelstein, Whitehead and Campbell’s book Think Again does a great job of exploring why good leaders make bad decisions and provides a context for why our elected leaders appear to be missing some of the basics I wrote about in my 11/10 blog.

Dr. Thomas Sowell’s book on Applied Economics (specifically part 1, the economics of medical care and part 2, how quantity of medical care is influenced by price controls) is a great read that a number of blogs and thought leaders are currently referencing. As I wrote in my 11/10 blog, it seems the basic concept of supply and demand has been abrogated by the apparent complexity of the problem being depicted by our elected officials. It appears we have locked on the wrong system aim and can't depart from the current thinking to see the logic of another argument.

Forcing a company to take a customer doesn’t work… just like forcing a customer into having only one choice of companies to purchase from doesn’t work. Government control and bureaucratic process only hinder efficiency and competitiveness… history has shown us this time and time again. It may seem counter intuitive based on the current public debate, but enabling more broadly based competition for the insurers would drive quality up and the cost of coverage down, ultimately making healthcare more achievable for all citizens. This has been proven to be the outcome in a free market economy. State by state and regional restrictions put on who can provide insurance and how it must be provided only ends up limiting the ability of the healthcare insurance industry to compete effectively.

So I it may be that the pursuit of coverage is not the right system aim as the government attempts to force/regulate the market’s customer group. If efficient delivery of care was the aim, we would be pursuing competitiveness rather than mandated coverage.

Let them compete… the patients will win… and healthcare will advance.

Tell me if I am the only person thinking this way… ‘cause if the rest of the world is crazy, then I may be the nut bag.