Win-win-win-win

Lathran Woodard (Executive Director of the SC Primary Health Care Association) and I made a presentation at the Northwest Regional Primary Care Association yesterday in Seattle. We were asked to talk about an innovative partnership our two organizations had formed 6 years ago to help small businesses find affordable healthcare (not health insurance) for their employees.

Essentially, community health centers (Federally Qualified Health Centers) provide excellent primary healthcare at affordable prices (primarily due to federal subsidies) and small businesses have uninsured workers who need good access to healthcare. Matching small businesses with community health centers isn't insurance and it does not cover hospital or specialist costs, but it does address about 80% of the healthcare needs of the workers.

Lathran and I told the session attendees of our successful pilot project started in 2005 between Midlands Steel and Recycling in Columbia and the Eau Claire and Richland Community Health Centers.

Today that business-to-business effort is still going strong. The workers have access to quality healthcare paid for by employer after a $10 co-pay, the employer is pleased at the low-cost and worker satisfaction and the healthcare centers appreciate the paying clients. It's a win-win-win for Midlands Steel, the employees and the health centers. Other South Carolina businesses (but not enough) have entered into the same agreements with their community health centers.

The question is–will this kind of creative approach be necessary or even allowed in 2014 when all citizens will be required to have health insurance (assuming the Supreme Court doesn't find the individual mandate to be unconstitutional)?

I think that some variation of this approach can still work. The country's community health centers will be needed more than ever come 2014 because of the need for more primary care physicians especially in rural areas. These centers will still offer more affordable services and this time it can be the health insurance companies that can lower premiums by tapping into this network of providers.

Let's see, that would make it a win-win-win-win. 

Survey says....

Deloitte has just released its 2011 Survey of Health Care Consumers: Global Report and the results don’t look good for the United States in spite of us spending 17.6% of our GDP on health care (far more than any other country included in this survey).

Here are just a couple revealing survey results.

--Only 22% of U.S. consumers give our health care system an “A” or “B” grade. That puts us just ahead of Portugal (18%) and Mexico (15%). Brazil brought up the bottom at only 8%. Which health care systems were liked the best by consumers? Luxembourg (69%), Belgium (57%), Switzerland (52%), France (51%), Canada (50%), and the United Kingdom (46%).

-- 37% of U.S. consumers give our health care system a failing “D” or “F” grade. That makes only Portugal (39%), Mexico (44%) and Brazil (57%) the countries in which their people dislike their health care systems more than we dislike ours. Even fewer Chinese give their health care system a failing grade (29%). Here are some of the other countries and their “D” or “F” grades—Germany (20%), United Kingdom (15%), Switzerland (17%), Canada (14%), France (11%), Belgium (8%) and Luxembourg (4%).


So the next time you hear a politician brag about the U.S. having the best health care in the world, remember that they are talking about health care services for those who have easy access and can afford the insurance premiums, deductibles and co-payments.

For the rest of the country, and especially the 37% who gave our health care system a failing grade, we’re looking forward to 2014. That is when most of the new health care law, the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare for some of you), is in place so that most Americans can get that great health care.