community driven healthcare reform
a R A T I O N A L E
T o b e g i n a n e w s t r a t e g y f o r t h e r e f o r m
o f o u r n a t i o n ‘ s H E A L T H c a r e ,
c o m m u n i t y b y c o m m u n i t y
INTRODUCTION
“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”
Aesop ( 620 – 564 BC )
“Consideration for others is the basis
for a good life, a good society.”
Confucius ( 551 – 479 BC )
“I shall pass this way but once;
any good that I can show to any human being, let me do it now.
Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”
Etiene de Grillet ( 1773 – 1855 )
“The best way to find yourself is
to lose yourself in the service of others.”
Mahatma Gandhi ( 1869 – 1948 )
“The language of citizenship suggests
that self-interests are always embedded in communities of action and
that, in serving neighbors, one also serves one-self.”
Benjamin R. Barber ( 1939 – )
Before getting started, please take a moment to read again the quotations cited above. As represented by these authors, their view of a person’s life is similar to my own. Do you also share their view of life? If so, you’ll probably agree with the next sentence about our nation’s healthcare. The current efforts to reform our nation’s healthcare will not improve the health care offered for the Basic Healthcare Needs of every citizen. This health care is often hard to locate or difficult to use because of its cost, the travel time to arrive at its location, or the need to pass through too many institutional and emotional doors to arrive at its source.
For truly lasting healthcare reform, a nationally sanctioned strategy must promote enhanced Primary Healthcare that is “equitably available” to each citizen within the Common Good of their own community. Every other developed nation of the world has a nationally sanctioned strategy to assure the equitable availability of enhanced Primary Healthcare for each of their citizens, most for a long time. The absence of this priority contributes substantially to the failure of our current healthcare reform to achieve any improvement in the over-all cost and quality problems of our nation’s healthcare.
For healthcare reform, I use the words “nationally sanctioned” to mean locally initiated, community sponsored, regionally promoted and nationally instituted. And, I use the word “enhanced” to mean that this Primary Healthcare offers Caring Relationships as the basis for its health care to achieve Stable HEALTH For Each Citizen.
Next, please accept a concept that fundamental healthcare reform must also have, as its most defining character, a strategy that improves the Social Capital within each community of @400,000 citizens. As a basis for healthcare reform, each community’s local commitment to improve its own Social Capital asset, simultaneously by nearly 800 separate communities, may represent just too many unknowns. However, if a community focused strategy to improve its own Common Good could represent a plausible platform for healthcare reform, please read on.
The remainder of this Sub-Page takes about 20 minutes to read. It describes a plan to promote a paradigm shift to release the current paradigm paralysis that is strangling our nation’s healthcare industry. A focused paradigm shift will be required to release the unfocused power and disciplined sophistication of our nation’s healthcare. To achieve this paradigm shift, a new strategy should begin slowly to build momentum. And then, more rapidly over 10 years, it should reconcile the humanitarian and scientific mandates for our nation’s healthcare with a renewed focus on the Basic Healthcare Needs of each citizen from within the Common Good of their own community.
SEVEN DEFINITIONS — LET’S BEGIN
Seven concepts should represent the basis for any discussion of healthcare reform. Each one of these concepts has not achieved a widely affirmed basis for their precise definition, especially to assure a clear inter-connection with the other 6 basic concepts. To improve our understanding and ability to implement healthcare reform, each of the concepts can be precisely defined with terminology that achieves a concise and powerful inter-connection with the other definitions.
As you will eventually perceive, these core concepts represent the basis for promoting a new nationally instituted and implemented strategy, community by community, to achieve an improved level of Stable HEALTH for each citizen. The seven basic concepts are: CARING RELATIONSHIP, COMMUNITY, FAMILY, HEALTH, INSTITUTION, SOCIAL CAPITAL, and SURVIVAL COMMONS. Together, they form a ‘new beginning’ for achieving a precisely defined strategy to guide our nation’s healthcare reform, community by community.
C A R I N G R E L A T I O N S H I P may be defined as
^
a social interaction between two persons,
occurring with an evolving purpose, synergy and permanence,
that both persons understand as representing a beneficent intent
to enhance each other’s autonomy by communicating in harmony
with warmth, non-critical acceptance, honesty and empathy.
C O M M U N I T Y may be defined as
^
a Cluster of persons uniformly identified by certain attributes,
typically as the citizens living within a geopolitically defined region,
who share a valued awareness about their connectedness
that is borne out of mutually experienced events and
their memory of the ecological and cultural traditions
associated with these mutually experienced events.
F A M I L Y may be defined as
^
one originating Independent person, OR two originating Independent persons who are married as recognized by an active marriage certificate or by common law, with the responsibility to:
a) maintain a primary household at one location, a Home, to develop a Personal Survival Plan for the originating Independent person or persons and any additional person or persons;
b) accept an additional person or persons into their household, if they are individually either i) a Dependent person who has a relationship with a current originating Independent person or persons as defined biologically through birth, such as a parent, sibling or child, or as defined legally through adoption, guardianship, foster care or divorce OR ii) an Independent person with the consent of the current originating Independent person or persons of the household in effect on the date of the additional Independent person’s initial residence within the household;
c) support enduring Caring Relationships between the household persons and with certain other Independent persons from outside of the household who would constitute, separately or in various combinations, an Extended Family and a micro Neighborhood Network; AND
d) promote a constellation of Family Traditions by the household person or persons who actively engage the inclusive participation by the person or persons of their Extended Family in the expression of these Family Traditions.
H E A L T H may be defined as
^
a person’s daily expression of Well-Being during life-long survival that is
^
Endowed by the person’s individually unique Clusters of Human Capabilities and
their transformation during maternal gestation
to become sufficient for survival after birth as a Dependent person
with an innate temperament and baseline homeostasis;
^
Nurtured by the Caring Relationships originating
before birth from within the Dependent person’s Family
to assist the person explore the broadest portrayal
of their reflective-cognition Cluster of Human Capabilities
for becoming an Independent person and
after birth from within the Extended Family and
the micro Neighborhood Network of the person’s Family
to offer periodic kindness and respect, especially when offered
in connection with the innate temperament of the person;
^
Challenged by the daily encounter with patterns of low-level disruptive processes
beginning before birth to cause variably beneficent and maleficent effects
on the developmental resilience of the person’s combined reflective-cognition
Cluster of Human Capabilities, innate temperament and baseline homeostasis
as ameliorated concurrently through the Caring Relationships originating
from within the person’s Family and Extended Family;
^
Matured by the episodic encounter with substantial disruptive processes
beginning before birth and occurring as interacting combinations and patterns
of multiple specific disruptive processes to cause reversible or irreversible,
usually maleficent, effects on the resilience of the person’s combined
Clusters of Human Capabilities, innate temperament and baseline homeostasis
as ameliorated by the Personal Survival Plan of the person; AND
^
Sustained by the person’s Family Traditions and the Survival Commons
of the person’s community until the resilience of the person’s combined
Clusters of Human Capabilities, innate temperament and baseline homeostasis
becomes insufficient for survival from the cumulative, maleficent effects
of the disruptive processes encountered throughout the person’s life-time.
I N S T I T U T I O N may be defined as
^
“…the rules that humans use to organize all forms of repetitive and
structured interactions including within families, neighborhoods, markets, firms,
sports leagues, churches, private associations, and governments, at all scales.
Individuals interacting within rule-structured situations face choices
regarding the actions and strategies they may take, leading to consequences
for themselves and for others. The opportunities and constraints individuals face
in any particular situation, the information they obtain or are excluded from, and
how they reason about the situation are all affected by the rules or
absence of rules that structure the situation. If the individuals
who are crafting and modifying the rules do not understand
how a particular combination of rules affects the actions and
outcomes in a particular ecological or cultural environment, rule changes
may produce unexpected and, at times, disastrous results.” (45)
S O C I A L C A P I T A L may be defined as
^
the norms of Trust, Cooperation and Reciprocity that
a community progressively transforms into its social cohesion and
its citizens more commonly express to resolve the social dilemmas
they encounter within their community’s civil life
WHEN Caring Relationships become increasingly prominent
among the networks of the community’s citizens,
especially by the generational Caring Relationships that originate community-wide
within the micro Neighborhood Network of each citizen’s Family.
S U R V I V A L C O M M O N S may be defined as
^
a community’s comprehensive strategy to mitigate
the unexpected or poorly anticipated occurrence
of disruptive processes that promote or cause Unstable HEALTH
for the community’s citizens that is
^
Enabled by the increasing participation of its citizens
in their community’s volunteerism with an intent to improve the
equitably available, ecologic accessible, justly efficient and reliably effective
attributes of their community’s Clusters of Benefits and Obligations
offered for the Personal Survival Plan of each citizen;
^
Instituted by the community to
“…secure the Domestic tranquility…” and “…promote the general welfare…”
for its citizens in accord with their Nation’s laws and regulations
currently applicable to the community’s private and
public institutions, at all levels;
^
Enhanced by the community-wide commitment
of each citizen to invest in their community’s level of Social Capital
beginning within the micro Neighborhood Network of their own Family;
^
Offered by the community to each of its citizens who may choose,
from among its Clusters of Benefits and Obligations,
the specific Benefits and Obligations most suitable
for the expression of their own Personal Survival Plan
within the human ecological and cultural environment of the community;
^
Augmented by the collective action strategies initiated
from among the community’s institutions and citizen networks
that are intended to ameliorate a ‘newly recognizable Social Dilemma’
affecting its citizens from a locally prominent discontinuity
within the community’s over-all SURVIVAL COMMONS,
especially if the ‘newly recognizable Social Dilemma’ represents
an impairment of the opportunities for improved social mobility’
within a citizen-group of the community;
^
Protected by the community’s Master Disaster Mitigation Strategy
for anticipating and managing the community’s response
to the occurrence of certain predictable disasters and their associated impairment
of the Human Capabilities required to maintain a Personal Survival Plan
by a significant portion of the community’s citizens; AND
^
Supported by the community’s
private and public institutions, at all levels, and
their Nation’s level of autonomy within the world-wide, market-place
arenas for its Resources, Knowledge and Human Dignity.
a NEW STRATEGY
Given the heritage of our nation’s healthcare and these seven definitions, I offer a new view of meaningful healthcare reform. This new strategy for the reform of our nation’s healthcare must continuously promote a renewal of the Survival Commons within each citizen’s community. There are nearly endless priorities that might be identified within this view of healthcare reform. Among these many priorities, I propose that only two priorities are important for true healthcare reform.
First, our nation’s healthcare industry must eventually offer enhanced Primary Healthcare that is equitably available for each citizen within their own community. This health care should offer Caring Relationships as defined above, thoughts spanning more than 2,500 years. A community commitment to equitably promote an enduring Caring Relationship between each citizen and a Primary Physician should be the essential attribute for this new view of healthcare reform.
The eventual improvement of healthcare, community by community, will require three nationally sanctioned projects. These national projects are necessary to successfully support community driven healthcare reform. They are: 1) an evolving comprehensive statement of “best practices” to achieve and sustain the career-long educational preparation of sufficient Primary Physicians for the Basic Healthcare Needs of all citizens; 2) a set of minimum definitions to use as the basis for the optimal economic reimbursement of enhanced Primary Healthcare and 3) a HEALTH SECURITY certification process for enhanced Primary Healthcare as the basis for its eligibility to receive optimal economic support.
Second, successful healthcare reform should promote an assessment of Primary Healthcare, community by community, to assure that it is equitably available. To support this obligation, each community averaging about 400,000 citizens would support the formation and functions of a Community HEALTH Forum. Nearly 800 of these Forums, nation-wide, would each be responsible for a Community HEALTH Plan to report an annual assessment of its equitably available Primary Healthcare and the results of a monitoring process for the efficiency and effectiveness of its healthcare. The report should include the options in place to promote continuous improvement of this Primary Healthcare to quality for HEALTH SECURITY certification. Eventually, a mature Community HEALTH Plan would also include:
- a section devoted to achieving equitably available and HEALTH SECURITY certified Primary Healthcare for each citizen as planned among the relevant community stakeholders; this section would eventually be augmented by a community, data-driven monitoring process for assessing improvement of the community’s level of Stable HEALTH;
- a Special Projects section to identify the locally prominent adversities affecting their community’s Survival Commons; this section would also include a community focused assessment of its current Social Capital asset and the collective action Special Projects currently in place for mitigating the discontinuities that exist within the community’s Survival Commons; and
- a section to describe the community’s annual review of its Master Disaster Mitigation Strategy for *) the likely occurrence of predictable disasters as a basis for mitigating the unpredictable disasters, *) their applicable preparation in advance of and recovery efforts after these predictable disasters and *) the community’s connection to their State and Federal governments’ disaster preparedness strategies.
A Community HEALTH Plan offers the best opportunity, annually revised, to highlight certain Special Projects in addition to the usual array of public health needs within each community. The Special Projects might include early childhood education, adolescent health, obesity, mental-health emergency-responsiveness or homelessness. Disaster preparedness is difficult since the timing and severity of disasters vary considerably. The options available before and after a disaster to mitigate its adverse effects are the most important attribute of these plans. Furthermore, the preparedness for predictable disasters then establishes the basis for unpredictable events.
After a few years, the character of these local Plans are likely to reflect the diversity of local attributes but could eventually coalesce nationally on the importance of certain details. Finally, the benefits of disaster planing are less obvious for the predicted disasters than it is for the unforeseen disasters. The resiliency of the community’s Social Capital commitment to advance its Survival Commons would be the most profound underlying component for the success of its disaster planning benefits.
Each Community HEALTH Forum would be formed from within the locally prominent, community-benefit stakeholders. As ADVOCATES within the over-all umbrella of NATIONAL HEALTH, each Forum would participate along with the other nearly 800 Community HEALTH Forums to pursue the collaborative options among their healthcare institutions already in place. A specific obligation for each Forum would engage and initiate “cooperation, reciprocity and trust” among their existing community institutions. Beginning more than 500 years ago, the enduring level of locally mobilized volunteerism may be our nation’s most important heritage for sustaining our nation’s world-wide autonomy and for the continuous reform of our nation’s healthcare.
MISSION TO THE MOON
Unintentionally, the traditions of our nation’s healthcare industry have interacted since 1969 to paralyze its capacity to initiate and perpetuate its own reform. To reverse this paralysis, a supreme national commitment will be required to implement a thoroughly reconsidered basis for healthcare reform. The commitment required for this level of reform should represent our nation’s next, “mission to the moon.”
Ten years after starting this newly considered “moon-shot,” I propose three very specific, National GOALs for healthcare reform: 1) reduce the 2016 spending for our nation’s healthcare from 18.0% to 13.0% of our nation’s economy; 2) reduce the annual number of women dying from a pregnancy in 2016 from 24.6 to 5.0 deaths per 100,000 live births, i.e., maternity mortality ratio; and 3) ratification by all States of a Congressional Charter to establish a new nationally constituted, semi-autonomous institution to guide this reform. Over ten years, these GOALs beginning in 2018 and ending in 2028 would: 1) reduce the annual health spending within our nation’s GDP by 27%, 2) reduce the number of women dying with a pregnancy by 80%, and 3) achieve ratification by all 50 States of a Congressional Charter for the new semi-autonomous institution, NATIONAL HEALTH.
Reducing the cost of our nation’s healthcare will be especially important for our nation to retain its autonomy within the market-place arenas for the world’s Resources as well as for its Knowledge and Human Dignity. Between 2011 and 2021, continuing our nation’s current deficit spending will eventually achieve a debt per citizen that is the same as it was for Greece in 2011. As of 2014, their nation was no longer able to arrange loans to support the deficits of its national government without dramatic changes in its governance.
For 2016, the total health spending for our nation’s healthcare was $3.41 Trillion. It represented 18.0% of our national economy. ALL of the other developed nations spend 13.1% or less of their nation’s economy on healthcare. Using a benchmark of 13.0% as a goal, the excess health spending in 2016 could be estimated as the difference between 13.0% and 18.0% of our nation’s economy in 2016. This excess health spending for our nation’s healthcare in 2016 would have been $927 Billion or the equivalent of fighting 9 Iraqi/Afghanistan wars in 2005, simultaneously.
To finish this analysis, the Federal government pays cash for 40% of our nation’s healthcare, representing $370 Billion of its excess cost in 2016. Most importantly, this $370 Billion represented 74% of our Federal deficit of $500 Billion projected for 2016. The excess cost of our nation’s healthcare currently represented the largest contribution to the 2016 deficit of our nation’s Federal government. Furthermore, there is absolutely no evidence that the current over-all strategy for healthcare reform will do anything to fix the poor efficiency of our nation’s healthcare.
As for its effectiveness, our nation’s maternal mortality ratio (MMR) is the most representative measure of its effectiveness. The MMR number represents the number of women within our nation who died during a year from causes directly related to a pregnancy per 100,000 living births. Believe it or not, there was no reported statistic for this number, state by state, between 2006 and 2015. The best analysis for the national statistics was most recently published in October of 2016 (60) for annual data that go back to 2000. This same publication also reported state by state data for 2005-2014. For perspective, there were 3,978,497 live births nationally in 2015.
The USA is the only developed nation in the world that has had a worsening maternal mortality ratio for 25+ years. And, our Nation’s MMR ranked 42nd worst among the 51 advanced developed nation’s of the world as reported by the United Nations for 2015. Based on a current analysis of the marginally different statistics, at least 800 women died during 2016 in the USA related to a pregnancy who would still be alive if they had lived in Iceland, Finland, Poland, Sweden, Austria, Italy, Czech Republic, Greece, Kuwait OR Norway when their pregnancy started. These 10 of the 51 advanced, developed nations had an average MMR of 3.8 according to the U.N. report of 2015
Finally, the last data set for MMR levels, state by state, listed the average of each state for the years of 2005 through 2014, nationally it was 11.3 . The best 5 states had an average MMR of 7.2 . One of these best 5 states was Alaska. If Alaska with all of its geologic, seasonal and Alaskan Native adversities could still achieve this result, shouldn’t it be possible for all the other 44 States and the District of Columbia to work toward that goal? The other 4 ‘best states’ were Massachusetts, Colorado, Maine and California.
Beginning today, “lift off” for NATIONAL HEALTH could be 6 months away. Our nation’s autonomy within the world-wide community is at stake. Established by a Congressional Charter for the benefit of our nation’s future, each citizen would eventually recognize the V I S I O N of the new institution by its name. I propose the following envisioning statements for NATIONAL HEALTH:
V I S I O N – Stable HEALTH For Each Citizen
^
MISSION – To sponsor healthcare reform
with a continuously renewed understanding of our nation’s
Resources, Knowledge and Human Dignity
^
VALUES – Altruism . Cooperation . Reciprocity . Trust . Excellence
GETTING STARTED
To understand the basic dimensions for the future of healthcare reform, I begin with a brief history lesson. The history lesson begins with the following question. What is the heritage of our nation that has evolved from the passions of the immigrants who have come here from foreign lands? To be sure, many passions have motivated the men and women who have chosen, and continue to choose, emigration from their homeland to North America. Among these motivations, three passions probably represent the essential heritage underlying emigration. One passion has been a desire to leave their homeland’s authoritarian, autocratic, centralized and coercive government.
A second passion has been a desire to become a citizen of a nation with constitutionally defined and enforced, freedom of speech. To be comprehensive, our First Amendment rights also include religion, print, assembly and petition. Since 2001, the world’s continuing and rapidly evolving events represented the beginning of a new era for the world-wide community. This new era clearly represents an evolving threat to each person’s Human Dignity when living in a nation with an autocratic, authoritarian, centralized, coercive government and, frequently, large-scale military violence. According to the NEWSEUM in 2014, only 9% of the world-wide population, who live outside of the USA, are citizens of a nation with our First Amendment rights.
The third passion that motivated immigrants has been, and still is, a chance to start a new way of life. Starting a new way of life was especially prominent for the early immigrants who came to North America and endured life-threatening hardships. Most early immigrants accepted, in advance, the profound and unknown dangers of these hardships. It was a small price to pay for the chance to achieve a substantially and permanently better quality of life. Relocating to North America and leaving “taxation without representation” was, and continues to be, worth these life threatening risks.
Unfortunately, some immigrants have come to our nation for other reasons. Human trafficking has forced and continues to force many immigrants to emigrate for the profit motives of their captors. In 1865, the 13th Amendment to our nation’s Constitution prohibited slavery. The forced loss of Human Dignity for the African emigrants was and continues to be a devastating failure of our nation’s commitment to uniformly honor and the Human Dignity of all persons. Other immigrants have come to our nation only to serve their own predominantly self-centered economic or social values. And, finally, the early immigrants forced our Native Americans to emigrate and, as a result, they became immigrants on their own land.
Our nation’s legal tradition of assumed property rights drove the forced immigration of our Native Americans. In 1879, Native Americans achieved protection under the law from a Federal Court decision by Judge Elmer Dundy for Chief Standing Bear of the Ponca Tribe. To achieve this decision, two attorneys had prevailed with a writ of “habeas corpus ad subjiciendum.” The two attorneys were employees of the Union Pacific railroad in Omaha and members of a Congregational church community that had supported their commitment.
Despite the reasons for immigration, successful survival in North America has always required self-discipline, hard work and altruism – a desire to help others. For 500 years, this dedication to individual survival was associated with an expectation that each community would function better if its citizens survived primarily on their own in spite of life’s tragic events. For the 12 million immigrants who arrived in New York City at Ellis Island, any healthcare that was eventually available to them was a privilege based on the economic success of their own survival. The immigrants who passed through Ellis Island represent the ancestors of nearly 40% of our nation’s current citizens, including my own from Sweden.
PARADIGM SHIFT — historical origin
Between 1850 and 1900, the origins of anesthesia and infection control began to evolve. This meant that the benefits of surgery needed a specific location outside of a person’s home. Prior to this combination of newly evolving technology, health care almost always occurred within a person’s home as offered by members of the person’s Extended Family and neighborhood. The only persons who did not receive this level of healthcare were the persons without a family, now recognized as homeless.
Almost every community beginning before and after 1700 began to have rudimentary hospitals for the homeless, now more appropriately labeled as “nursing homes.” Most of these were community established through county and city levels of government or religious institutions. With the evolution of surgery, some of these early nursing homes adapted to eventually become modern-day hospitals.
Most importantly, the early and eventually profound evolution of life-saving healthcare beyond the confines of a person’s home removed a powerful focus for the processes to empower the mutually shared commitments within a Family to care for each other. Originating slowly during the aftermath of the Civil war ending in 1865, newly constructed hospitals became more common after World War I and especially after World War II.
Along with the shift of health care to a location ‘foreign’ to most citizens, the ecologic character of each person’s HEALTH became exposed to many newly evolving changes, e.g., travel, communication, urbanization and industrialization. A continuing cycle of violence, world-wide and neighborhood by neighborhood, has evolved since the end of WWII in 1945. And amid the cultural adaptation to these changes, we have arrived at a time whereby a person’s Extended Family and their Family Traditions no longer have the traditional life-style resources for supporting each person during episodes of Unstable HEALTH.
All of this has led to a diminished commitment within each community to sustain the Stable HEALTH of its citizens through its Survival Commons. Beginning in 1969, the disruptive processes that contribute to the causes of Unstable HEALTH are increasingly beyond the control of our healthcare industry. Given the vast social and economic changes of the last 150 years since the Civil War, we have arrived at level of turmoil within our world and our nation that is unprecedented by almost any definition.
Disruptive Processes refers to anything that decreases the stable expression of a person’s survival. This could be the obvious physical injuries like broken bones and head injuries. But, it also refers to pneumonia, emotional stress, poor diet, lack of sleep or anything else that in combination decreases the stability of a person’s HEALTH.
PARADIGM SHIFT with PARALYSIS
Beginning in 1969, a rapidly evolving improvement began to occur in the sophistication of healthcare that is available for Complex Healthcare Needs. Unfortunately, the improved quality of health care for Complex Healthcare Needs has not been matched by a similar improvement in the health care for Basic Healthcare Needs. This change in the last 49 years means that self-discipline, hard work and altruism no longer guarantee that health care is equitably available for the Basic Healthcare Needs of each citizen, even for the citizens who have achieved economic success. Inadequately available health care for Basic Healthcare Needs can be especially profound *) for any woman prior to and during a pregnancy and *) for any citizen who is an infant, disabled or homeless.
By 2009, the poorly recognized imbalance that had evolved between the health care for Basic Healthcare Needs and for Complex Healthcare Needs represents a root cause for the problems within our nation’s health care. Furthermore, the health care for Basic Healthcare Needs has deteriorated without a strategy to assure that Primary Healthcare is equitably available and ecologically accessible by each citizen in every community. The effect of this deficiency has led to severe problems within our healthcare industry, as in its unjust efficiency and unreliable effectiveness for preventable maternal deaths.
The imbalance is the partial result of an inadequate level of financial capital for the Basic Healthcare Needs of each citizen as compared to the financial capital that is available for their Complex Healthcare Needs. It is not the fault of any one citizen or group of citizens. It began to occur, more prominently, after Congress authorized Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. Between 1960 and 2016, the portion of our nation’s economy allocated to healthcare has more than tripled. Unfortunately, the flow of these resources preferentially into health care for Complex Healthcare Needs has produced a deeply entrenched and pervasive co-dependency between the institutions paying for Complex Healthcare Needs and the institutions offering healthcare for these Complex Healthcare Needs. These institutions are largely medical school affiliated hospitals. The institutional co-dependency is a root-cause of the Paradigm Paralysis afflicting our nation’s healthcare industry, one of many.
The Paradigm Paralysis means that the heritage of our nation has produced a healthcare industry that is unable to start or sustain its own reform. Since 2009, this industry has now required a new and widely supported institution to guide its reform. Our nation’s agriculture industry has had its Cooperative Extension Service since 1914, and our nation’s monetary policy has had its Federal Reserve since 1913. As a result, our nation’s agriculture is the most efficient and effective among the world’s nations, by a wide margin, and our nation’s dollar is still a prominent basis for asset transfer among nations ( in spite of our nation’s increasing indebtedness ). Now, 100+ years later, a similar institution for the healthcare industry must begin by promoting Primary Healthcare, community by community, that is equitably available to each citizen.
Ultimately, our nation’s healthcare industry must begin a tradition to establish its capacity to re-energize a local ‘collective thrust’ heritage within each community. This heritage would sustain a nation-wide, community-based tradition for recognizing its own obligation to promote the HEALTH of their citizens. The new strategy should also focus on the HEALTH of citizens with special needs, especially every child and their mother. Thirty years from now, our nation’s autonomy within the world-wide community will depend on the strength of each community’s Survival Commons necessary to foster our nation’s caring and learning generations of citizens, year after year. A newly enriched definition of HEALTH helps to explain this assertion. It is one of the 6 new definitions listed above.
“GOVERNING THE COMMONS”
Because of its profound inefficiency, our healthcare industry is no longer affordable within our nation’s economy. A “Tragedy of the Commons” has occurred. (30) The traditions of our national heritage have led to this crisis. Exploring the basis for remodeling these traditions is the central theme of this Blog. The TRADITIONS Page and its Sub-Pages explore this theme in greater detail. They attempt to explain why the problems are so difficult to assess and implement solutions from within our nation’s healthcare industry.
Professor Elinor Ostrom points the way with her studies described in nine books published between 1990 and 2010. “Governing the Commons” (31) is the first book in the series. Within this series, she describes an analysis of shared use strategies applied with an intent to preserve a natural resource, such as the fresh water aquifer under the city of Los Angeles, California. Her studies, along with the research of numerous colleagues, have defined the Design Principles for the successful governance of any institution with a responsibility to preserve a common-pool resource. In 2009, Professor Ostrom received a Nobel Prize in economics for her research.
NEW CONCEPTS
For lasting healthcare reform, its strategy should include a continuing search for new concepts that would be uniquely applicable to the future reform of our nation’s healthcare industry. The search for these concepts should not necessarily represent an intent to start a new tradition or to match the institutional heritage of another nation. Among the world’s developed nation’s, the traditions of our own healthcare industry are unique. Given our own traditions, this proposal for NATIONAL HEALTH or any other reform proposal should refine these traditions rather than replace them. The other developed nations of the world have adopted a variety models for their own healthcare. They are instructive but do not easily provide a specific model to duplicate for our nation.
The search for concepts that are possibly applicable to healthcare reform for this Blog covers primarily the last 60 years. Within the public arena, I have selected a set of concepts for healthcare reform based on how they would jointly interact for a larger impact. These concepts represent realms of knowledge from a diverse group of scholars. I propose that, taken together, they represent a pragmatic basis for the comprehensive reform of our nation’s healthcare. It is described by the Initiative Page and its Sub-Pages for the new institution, NATIONAL HEALTH.
HEALTH CARE versus HEALTHCARE — A NEW ERA
Given our nation’s pioneer heritage, the historic traditions of our nation’s healthcare industry have evolved, especially since 1969, into a diverse mix of institutions. This industry has become increasingly unstable since 2010. In 2011, an unexpected number of critical medications were suddenly no longer available. One year later, a failure to maintain quality control standards by a compounding pharmacy in Massachusetts led to more than 75 deaths throughout our nation. Their state’s Public Health Department failed to monitor the quality control standards maintained by the compounding pharmacy. The regulatory failure ultimately contributed to the disaster. Similar disasters involving compounding pharmacies in Tennessee and Texas began to unfold at mid-year in 2013.
Next, the opening phase of the National Health Insurance Exchange in October of 2013 was disheartening, at best. And finally in 2014, the problems with the Veterans Administration represented a recurring theme of institutional leadership problems. This subsequently reached a new peak when its was announced in 2017 that several of their hospitals had lost inventory control of their narcotic medication supplies.
Any reform strategy to promote a broad improvement throughout the diverse institutions of a nation’s large industry must proceed with caution. The balance of improving the daily HEALTH of individual citizens must be balanced by an evolving continuum of ‘healthcare’ over time and how it fits together for the seamless ‘health care’ needs of each citizen. Hopefully, the unstable series of events, noted above over 7 years, was only an isolated occurrence. The evolving reality of the ACA 2010 could worsen this turmoil given is inability to fundamentally unravel the Paradigm Paralysis strangling our nation’s healthcare.
To formulate a new strategy for a carefully defined and implemented healthcare reform strategy, the TRADITIONS Page and its Sub-Pages analyze the essential traditions of our nation’s healthcare. Five of the Sub-Pages propose a solution for specific root-causes within the Paradigm Paralysis of our nation’s healthcare. Based on this analysis, the Initiative Page and its Sub-Pages describe a new institution, NATIONAL HEALTH, Chartered by Congress. See OVERVIEW Page for further details.
If you appreciate the fundamental value of concepts and ideas as a basis for shaping the future course of events, then you also have a unique perspective for considering the character of our nation’s healthcare. Overall, NATIONAL HEALTH integrates concepts originating from the traditions of thought underlying the social contract for the governance of Western nations. They are: sociology, economics, physics, psychology, biology as well as medicine. Let me introduce you to: Eric Hoffer, Leon Festinger, Carl Rogers, Thomas Kuhn, Lawrence Weed, Garrett Hardin, Peter Drucker, Steven Covey, and Elinor Ostrom. As a basis for healthcare reform, the cohesion of their concepts as well as the concerns of many persons expressed to me during their personal healthcare represents the essential momentum guiding the conceptual priorities for this healthcare reform proposal.
REPRISE & RECAPITULATE — “The Future As History”
The brief quotation above represents the title of a book written by Robert L. Heilbroner. (61) It was printed in 1960. He reviewed the essential trends within our nation before 1960 as a basis to describe a view of our nation’s near term evolution. He was substantially correct. The knowledge for assessing future options was known then, as it probably is knowable now for the future of healthcare reform.
To continue a sense of our nation’s heritage over the last 500 years, isolated episodes of supreme commitment and purpose have defined our nation’s history. Remember, especially, the voyage of the Mayflower in 1620, the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865 as the Civil War ended, the national commitment to WWII after the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, the subsequent Mission to the Moon after Sputnik in 1957 and our nation’s sudden awareness of global terrorism after the World Trade Center attack in 2001.
I propose that the knowledge and Social Capital already exists to reform our nation’s healthcare. With a “Moon Shot” level of precision and resolve, fundamental healthcare reform could reduce the cost of our nation’s healthcare from 18.0% of the national economy to 13.0%. Remember again that it was 5.0% in 1960. This same strategy could reduce our nation’s number of women who died in 2016 with a pregnancy, from 24.6 down to 4.9 deaths per 100,000 living births. The improvement in maternal health would have prevented at least 800 maternal deaths in 2016, assuming 4 million births.
It is highly unlikely that our nation’s current strategy for healthcare reform could achieve these results, or come close. Indeed, we must begin by first acknowledging the pervasive paradigm paralysis afflicting our nation’s healthcare. Importantly, this paradigm paralysis increasingly compromises our nation’s autonomy within the world-wide market place for its Resources. Now is time for a new strategy to promote the Social capital for each community’s Common Good, as the basis for improving the HEALTH of each citizen.
There are validated Design Principles that apply to the use of collective action for managing a common pool resource, as in the portion of our nation’s economy devoted to healthcare. Since 1960, our nation’s health spending has increased from 5.0% of the GDP to 18.0% in 2016. It represents an increase of 5.0%, compounded annually as corrected for economic growth and inflation. Using the Design Principles defined by Elinor Ostrom and validated by many colleagues, NATIONAL HEALTH could achieve the widely supported authority necessary to implement the strategies required at the national, regional and local levels for healthcare reform.
Our currently evolving progress for healthcare reform continues to focus primarily on universal health insurance. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 was a magnificent accomplishment, in spite of its deficiencies. Unfortunately, it is actually worsening the level of efficiency within our nation’s healthcare industry. And, it does very little to sponsor the fundamental reforms necessary to achieve equitably available, enhanced Primary Healthcare for each citizen.
To begin true healthcare reform, it should be locally implemented and nationally promoted, community by community. As cited above, former Senator Barber reminds us that “The language of citizenship suggests that self-interests are always embedded in communities of action and that, in serving neighbors, one serves one-self.” NATIONAL HEALTH represents a means to achieve ‘Stable HEALTH For Each Citizen’ through communities of action.
