Four deadly conversation sins. Sex, politics, religion - and now healthcare.

 

Supreme Court or no - here’s my take. Our healthcare provider’s hiking our rates 22 percent. My first reaction - to tell the provider to take a hike.

 

What’s the point of having insurance if you can’t afford to use it? Just like automotive and homeowner insurance, these policies are becoming a racket - where the impact on your premiums means you can’t afford to claim.

 

Love or hate Obamacare, something’s got to be done. Healthcare cost is eating American business alive. Corporations can’t hike our rates to customers, and it’s wrong to squeeze our employees. So, the business gets caught in the middle.

 

Here’s my prescription for the cure:

 

1.     Profit Motive vs. Hippocratic Oath: We need to get over the fact that healthcare is going to be a regulated industry. Laissez-faire can’t run free here.

 

2.     Rights vs. Wrongs: We need to get over the “encroachment” on people’s right to choose. We all need to opt in or out of buying healthcare. If we opt out, we need to sign a waiver that says we will not get healthcare - and we need to live with the consequences as a society. And, that’s no fun.

 

Is it unreasonable to require all drivers to carry automotive insurance? Why should people be allowed to travel on the road of life hoping that they never get into an accident?

 

3.     Tech vs. Tonic: We need to stop talking and start transforming. EHRs are coming online but, alone, offer nowhere near a complete cure. The future - in terms of outcomes and controlling costs - is personalized and predictive medicine. And for that, we need to think big, as in gaining control over and yielding insight from healthcare’s largely untapped big data.  

 

Healthcare is at the center of our economic viability. If we don’t fix this, we’ll see American businesses and jobs take a hike.