Watching the Sunday Talk Shows- It's Depressing

When I get the time, I like to scan the different Sunday talk shows to keep a fresh perspective of the views of our politicians and commentators and keep updated on the status of our country- strictly from a media perspective (I know it's a bias view- but entertaining at least). Last week, (not surprisingly) it was all about the AIG bonuses and the general status of our economy. I was intrigued with the force of the disagreement existing between our political parties about how best to address these challenges and the many other challenges we are facing. Both sides are entrenched in their views- and the criticism on all sides flowed freely. I didn't see a lot of bi-partisan collaboration.

As I watched the different shows, I began to wonder- "If all of this political capital is being spent on these critical items that need to be addressed now- how are we ever going to make the changes to our health care system that need to be made?" There may not be any political capital left- on either side.

We don't need incremental change now- we need a major overhaul in our reimbursement

structure, our focus, our perspective, and the fundamental way our system operates. As we've stated in the principles of our Collaborative Health Care system- it's going to require a bi-partisan combination of public and market initiatives to make it work. From what I have been reading and witnessed on Sunday, it ain't going to happen.

In a September, 2008 essay in Business Week, Louis Gerstner (retired chairman and CEO of IBM) suggested that "the processes of government are broken, preventing us from taking responsible action". He further contends "the U.S. is better at patching problems than fixing them." The collapse of our banking system, housing, and credit markets, is a perfect example; many folks knew the way the markets were operating was unsustainable. We just didn't listen or do anything about it.

David Walker, CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation highlights the issue at hand in the title of his article in Fortune, "Call This A Crisis? Just Wait." He's talking about Social Security and health care. He states, "at the heart of these problems is our leaders' collective failure to act in the face of known challenges. Our country has veered from its founding principles, which held to individual responsibility and accountability today in order to create more opportunity tomorrow. When our constitution was written, the concepts of thrift and prudence were no less at the center of the American spirit than liberty and justice."

The health care crisis is out there. We're coping with it now, but there will be a day of reckoning in the years ahead. Whether we like it or not- health care is as important to our economic security, as revitalizing the credit markets. It's just not at crisis stage yet. From what I'm seeing now- I don't see a lot of promise for a major reform effort coming from the government structures that are established today. Quite frankly, I'm tired of the talk and rhetoric. We need to look for alternative ways to get the message across that we can't wait and hope that all of the other stakeholders- employers, consumers, health plans, and providers can come together with a solution. We don't have a lot of time.

Maybe I should stop watching the Sunday talk shows.