Saturday, February 13, 2010
Health Care Overhaul
What looks like the end of the President's health care overhaul has some people shouting for joy, but it should not be that way. As Washington Senator Maria Cantwell noted even with no health care overhaul prices will go up, and they will. However, in the middle of the worst recession in recent history, with budget deficits already at figures most of us can not even comprehend, it is not time to put out a broad goal and then let Congress try to figure out how to make it work.
So here's an idea - why not put together a non-partisan task force that can show government how to foster an environment of disruptive innovation within the health care industry. A good candidate to lead that would be Dr. Clayton Christensen from Harvard ("The Innovators Prescription") who has done extensive work on disruptive innovation in several industries, including his latest work which looks at the health care industry and how disruption can work there.
If we provide the environment necessary for innovation to grow (and that should be the primary job of government anyway), then the innovative forces of the marketplace will solve the problem of cutting the cost of health care and go a long way toward universal coverage. Understand, this is not going to be a "one term" process, or even a "one President" process, but an ever on-going process that will keep re-shaping health care through the future and beyond.
Of course, once this environment is set in motion, then government (national, state, and local) should work on fostering the environment necessary for small businesses to flourish. If you want to solve unemployment, then small business is the way to go.
So here's an idea - why not put together a non-partisan task force that can show government how to foster an environment of disruptive innovation within the health care industry. A good candidate to lead that would be Dr. Clayton Christensen from Harvard ("The Innovators Prescription") who has done extensive work on disruptive innovation in several industries, including his latest work which looks at the health care industry and how disruption can work there.
If we provide the environment necessary for innovation to grow (and that should be the primary job of government anyway), then the innovative forces of the marketplace will solve the problem of cutting the cost of health care and go a long way toward universal coverage. Understand, this is not going to be a "one term" process, or even a "one President" process, but an ever on-going process that will keep re-shaping health care through the future and beyond.
Of course, once this environment is set in motion, then government (national, state, and local) should work on fostering the environment necessary for small businesses to flourish. If you want to solve unemployment, then small business is the way to go.
