health care can kill

How Much Is Your Company’s Healthcare Liability?
September 6th, 2007 @ 10:27 am

GM has a total healthcare liability of $64 billion. No wonder the ongoing talks with the UAW are tense and the industry as a whole is struggling to compete (for a fascinating look at how the way America pools risk handicaps auto makers, check out this article by Malcolm Gladwell). But it’s not just the auto industry that’s burdened by the mounting troubles of the American healthcare system. From Michael Moore’s latest film, to the near daily articles about the “obesity epidemic,” to a flood of proposed legislation from Congress, healthcare is on everyone’s mind.
Luckily, many smart people are at work on the issue. This week Forbes.com is pooling their collective wisdom in a feature entitled “Solutions: Healthcare.”
You’ll find AOL founder Steve Case discussing empowering the consumer through his new venture RevolutionHealth.com, and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D-R.I.) proposal to store every American’s health records centrally and make prescriptions entirely electronic. Michael J. Critelli, executive chairman of Pitney Bowes, urges us to look “at investing in health as we do any other investment, with a payback in terms of not only lower costs for healthcare but reduced absenteeism.” And Princeton Professor Uwe Reinhardt, makes the point that the American healthcare system is no value: we spend twice as much as Canadians per capita. His solution? Invest in “information infrastructure” to get the right information to the right people more efficiently.
Forbes also looks at a topic we recently blogged here on the BNET Intercom: what managers can and should do to improve the health of their teams. Based on your responses, it’s a tricky question that many managers are wrestling with.
These issues, which certainly interest us as citizens, also matter for American business. Problems with healthcare increase the costs of insurance, absenteeism, and reduce productivity due to illness and stress. Forbes is on to something. We need more smart minds thinking about these problems and sharing their insights.