The Healthcare Mess started in the 1950's

      The Healthcare Mess started in the 1950's when the BIG industrial Unions( UAW, Electrical Workers Union, Teamsters and other AFL/ CIO unions) and the Giant Industrial Companies ( GM, GE, US Steel etc) decided to substitute wage increases, which has an immediate bottom line impact with benefits, like Healthcare, Pensions, Vacations, which has a longer term impact.
      The Giant Industrial companies recognized that Healthcare would be cheap for at least twenty years, since their workforce were young, the cost of medicine, doctor visits were not that expensive. They really didn't care about the longer term since they would be retired and didn't have to worry about the cost of healthcare in the future.
       In addition there were an abundance of young doctors, because they received a free education from the GI Bill and there were inexpensive easy to use diagnostic equipment.
       The patients were use to FREE or low cost healthcare and didn't worry about going to the doctors for simple things like colds, rashes. The doctors were happy since they could just practice medicine and not worry about running a business and prices they charged.
      The result was a system that was a form of SOCIALIZED medicine, but it was paid for my the companies and not the patients or the doctors.
      This ideal situation encouraged the healthcare industry, such as the equipment manufactures (GE, Siemens, Hitachi) to invest in more expensive and sophisticated equipment such as MRI, CTs and others and to discard the cheaper X-Ray equipment.
      In short everyone was happy...the patients got free care, could select their doctors from a large pool, get access to improving drugs; the healthcare practitioners could do what they want..."practice medicine"; the companies delayed increasing costs since the benefits didn't impact their bottom line at the time.
      In my next blog... I will provide a strategic analysis of what changed in the 1970 to 1990's.  The happy days started to become "less happy, but still okay".

If you want more information about the current healthcare situation visit: www.enabledoc.com.

Bill Rothschild...Rothschild Strategies Unlimited LLC---now focused on enabling the healthcare professionals become strategic leaders.