As I mention in my post a few weeks ago, this month launches Revolution!, an interactive transmedia project that will empower each and every one of us to help facilitate change in some way, no matter how small. Whether its change at home, in your community, globally or just within you- you will have the tools you need to be the change you wish to see in the world.
Part of this project is Revolution! Solutions, a 30 day collaborative exchange of ideas around a specific storyline. We are all in this together and the more we brainstorm solutions, the more likely we will be to find solutions that work! So, let the game begin.
What if…..
<2011 – the first of the Baby Boomers becomes eligible for MediCare and begins the cycle Gerontologist’s coined, “The Silver Tsunami”.
<2015 – the hospital and emergency medical systems in the major cities feel the strain and suffer under a critical shortage of competent staff and teachers to train them.
<2019 – the pharmaceutical industry reels from prescription drug benefits in the MediCare package. Their answer is a rate hike that leads to a 40% increase for all medications sold across the board.
<2021 – concierge medicine takes hold, affording the wealthy a country-club style membership with unfettered access to their own physician and control over appointments and procedures. Physicians leave hospitals and clinics in droves. The “Doctor Drought” begins.
<2025 – the AMA and the Surgeon General declare America’s hospitals to be as dangerous and lacking in sanitation as any Third World Country.
<2027 – infection becomes the number one killer, displacing cancer and heart disease for the first time in 95 years. The winter is particularly cold and flu claims thousands.
<2029 – the President’s economists report that despite cuts and taxes, the social security trusts are approaching solvency. 15 years ahead of projections.
-this information is leaked to the New York Times.
-the Dollar plummets across the globe.
-911 use is restricted to city, state, and Federal officials on official business only.
-The Red Cross issues a list of items every American should have in an emergency.
-The National Guard organizes local resources and rations healthcare by issuing triage cards to citizens to hang on front doors.
-states centralize.
-and wait.
Now YOU:
Where are you? Do you know First Aid? Are you caring for the sick? Are you the caregiver for your family? Your town? Do you have access to a computer? Can you tell us how you’re coping? Can you tell us what you’re doing to keep healthy? Do you have your own list of items we should know about?
Tell us your story. We are trying to collect enough information on various topics so we can spread the word and help our neighbors and friends adapt to this unprecedented medical freeze.
How to Submit
1) You can communicate in the way you feel comfortable: Blog about it, create videos, tweet, Facebook it or curate your story through Flickr. It doesn’t matter.
2) Post a link to your solution or story on the comment section or use the hashtag #Revolution
3) We will feature submissions and their owners throughout the month and YOU VOTE on the your favorite solutions.
Winners will be announced on March 1st.
So……..
4 Comments
What if you lived in a country where over 100,000 people died each year due to preventable medical errors in even thier best hospitals and clinics?
What of you lived in a country where another 100,000 people a year died from medication errors and drug interactions that were completely preventable?
What if you lived in a country that consistently ranked near the bottom in terms of health care quality, cost and access while spending far more than any other country in the world on its health care?
Welcome to America in 2011… the “what ifs” here are a little silly given the fact that:
1)Hospital and emergency rooms are already under strain and tens of millions of Americans in both urban and rural areas already live in medically underserved areas with actute shortages of health care services and practitioners.
2)The pharmaceutical industry has profited dramatically from drug benefits for Medicare and Medicais recipients, but this is totally unrelated to the fact that they have consistently raised prices and gouged consumers due to corporate greed and insufficient government regulation and oversight.
3)”Concierge” medicine already exists, here and abroad.
4)You should know that hospital-based infections (especially the most dangerous drug-resistant strains such as MRSA and VRE) are already large-scale silent killers, and have been for decades – unbeknownst to the average health care “consumer”.
5)The alleged future “insolvency” of social security is a myth being perpetuated by Wall Street as a justification for privativing social security and turning over trillions of dollars of public dollars to private investment houses. Social security remains an essential healthy program and has been arguably the most sucessful anti-poverty entitlement program of the last century in the Western Hemisphere. All objective analyses of social security show that with some relatively minor adjustments (i.e. applying social security taxes to income above $90,000 and perhaps introducing more progressive taxation of higher income earners) would address the funding issues in the future. The scare mongers on social security are ill-informed and/or motivated by thier own financial interests.
6) We already ration health care. Anyone who thinks this isn’t the case doesnt know anything about how healthcare in the United States works. The private sector is empowered to make unilateral decisions about who gets what coverage, and what they will pay. There is no such thing as a “free market” in health care, and consumers actually have very little choice or control (when you are having a heart attach, do they ask you which hospital you prefer or present you with information about the quality and price of care at competiting institutions to allow you to make the best choice of where to go, or do you get taken to whichever ER is accepting patients and get a bill for whatever they decide to charege you regardless of the outcome or quality of care?).
Sorry for the snarky posting, but if you really want a “revolution” in health care, you need to start by understanding some basic facts and challenging some of the common myths and fallacies about the health care system as it exists. The notion that we have the best health care in the world in the US is considered ridiculous by EVERYONE who is educated about health policy in the world, while a firm majoirty of Americans continue to believe it. Likewise, the idea that the crises in Medicare, Social Security or health care are somehow insurmountable is equally ridiculous and only demonstrates a weak grasp on the underlying policy, politics and economics.
We are very capable of having a health care and social security system that works for everyone and is just, sustainable and accessible. It is a political problem, not an economic or proactical one, whose solution is only delayed by our own ignorance and failure of imagination.
Do you want a sane, sustainable solution to the health care crisis? And the Medicare/Medicaid “crisis”?
Single-payer Medicare for all.
Eliminate the for-profit private health insurance industry and replace it with a universal, public non-profit insurance program that covers ever man, woman and child from cradle to grave.
In other words, just expand Medicare to cover everyone and cut out all of the other middle men who take thier repective cuts out of our health care dollars at every stage of the current game.
Currently 35 cents of every health care dollar goes to pay for unnecessary administrative overhead due solely to the multiple private bureacracies of private insurers and providers fighting over who is (or isn’t) going to get paid how much for what. In a $2.5 trillion/year health care system, this means over $700 BILLION a year is being flushed down the toilet every year on lawyers,accountants, claims adjusters and bill collectors when it should be going to pay for health care.
Medicare, by comparison, spends less than 5% of its total costs on administrative costs – making it by far the most cost-efficient insurance administrator in the United States. Medicare (along with the Veterans Administration) is also consistently rated the highest among beneficiearies for consumer satisfaction and quality of care. In other words, our seniors and our soldiers get the best care, at the lowest price, with the highest rate of satisfaction – and they all get thier care through federal funding and government management of thier care.
Just beacause it flies in the face of the “private industry is always more efficeint” dogma doesnt mean it isn’t true. Facts are facts, and the fact is that the bes (and most cost-effecient) care in the United States is already delivered by the federal government and we’d all be a lot better off in the long run if we cut the private interests and the profit motives out of our health care system entirely.
2029 – Did you mean to say “solvency”?
Dr. Know, Thanks for your post but I think you may have misunderstood the objective of this. It’s a game. Based on a series of events, where will you be? What will you do about it?
The Economist: Thanks for your submission. I’ll be interested to see what people say when I highlight it. Thanks.
Candi: I think that’s what he meant. Nice caught.
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If the healthcare system were to collapse, what would you do?…
Revolution! Solutions, a 30 day collaborative exchange of ideas around a specific storyline. This month, we face the fall of healthcare: You’re stuck and cannot get the help you need. What will you do? For more information on this collaborative game: …
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