[Vision2020] Vision2020 Digest, Vol 67, Issue 249
Katherine Sprague
kathys at moscow.com
Wed Jan 18 14:10:47 PST 2012
----- Original Message -----
From: <vision2020-request at moscow.com>
To: <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 12:45 PM
Subject: Vision2020 Digest, Vol 67, Issue 249
> Send Vision2020 mailing list submissions to
> vision2020 at moscow.com
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> http://mailman.fsr.com/mailman/listinfo/vision2020
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> vision2020-request at moscow.com
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> vision2020-owner at moscow.com
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Vision2020 digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Re: More Proof Preventative Health Care Saves (Jay Borden)
> 2. Re: More Proof Preventative Health Care Saves (keely emerinemix)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:51:32 -0800
> From: "Jay Borden" <jborden at datawedge.com>
> To: "Tom Hansen" <thansen at moscow.com>
> Cc: vision2020 at moscow.com
> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] More Proof Preventative Health Care Saves
> Message-ID:
> <AF80DB24B7E90143B959A2225AD3FEA675933D at sol.DataWedge.local>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> My heart goes out to the folks behind the examples you cite during your
> (hopefully brief) stay in the ICU? but they have nothing to do with human
> nature and prevention. Your examples strike towards insurance and
> coverage? not preventative medicine.
>
>
>
> The most recent personal example I have doesn?t deal with health care, so
> I?m sure it will be attacked as irrelevant? but it certainly strikes at
> human behavior. (If you consider it too irrelevant, then chalk it up to
> ?personal analogy?).
>
>
>
> My second company (a widget producer) is the result of my taking over a
> bankrupt enterprise nearly two years ago. The previous owner was
> severally in debt, was in the process of declaring personal bankruptcy,
> and was in the process of just walking away from the entire business.
>
>
>
> Without diving too far into detail about the business, I found that the
> company was in financial ruin because of the sheer number of returns of
> widget sub-components. An excel spreadsheet told me that there was over a
> 200% return rate for the widgets? (for every widget sold, a customer (on
> average) would return it for an exchange/replacement at least twice).
>
>
>
> As the number of exchanges grew, the previous owner (fearing customer
> backlash at product quality) would increase the length of the warranty,
> and try to off-set the replacement cost by raising the price of the
> widget.
>
>
>
> Lengthening the warranty period only made the problem worse? customers had
> a larger window to return the widgets for replacement.
>
>
>
> Turns out the problem had nothing to do with design? it was customers not
> bothering to read or learn anything about proper use of the widgets, or
> trying to use the widgets for a completely different purpose altogether.
>
>
>
> Tack on a free replacement guarantee, and customers didn?t bother to
> self-educate? they just let the company ?fix the problem? with the
> warranty.
>
>
>
> The first thing I did was change the warranty policy? and I shortened to a
> VERY SHORT length of time (to allow for ?out of the box? failures). I
> followed this up with a dramatic reduction in price, making ?true?
> failures after a length of time affordable to replace.
>
>
>
> The problem went away overnight. Immediately customers started
> calling/emailing? wanting to know more about proper installation
> procedures, proper use of their product, and ?whether it would work in
> misc. environment X?.
>
>
>
> As soon as it became the customer?s responsibility to take care of the
> widget, it suddenly had increased value to them, and they were more
> careful with it and made sure they used the widget properly.
>
>
>
> The difference between the has been one of business SUCCESS vs. business
> FAILURE.
>
>
>
> The (new) company has survived? customers have a parts solution? and life
> has continued.
>
>
>
> Yes, I realize that many of you will probably dismiss this as irrelevant,
> since it doesn?t contain ?health care?? but it?s human nature. People
> tend not to care about something when someone else foots the bill.
>
>
>
> Whether you?re talking about widgets or high-blood pressure? if someone
> else is footing the bill and responsibility, people will generally tend to
> not think about the consequences or the price tag, and just go with
> whatever is easy.
>
>
>
>
>
> Jay
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> From: Tom Hansen [mailto:thansen at moscow.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 11:56 AM
> To: Jay Borden
> Cc: Donovan Arnold; <vision2020 at moscow.com>
> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] More Proof Preventative Health Care Saves
>
>
>
> Jay Borden stated:
>
>
>
> "I can tell you first-hand my experiences on how human behavior changes as
> soon as fiscal responsibility to pay is shifted to the individual as
> opposed to a faceless 3rd party."
>
>
>
>
>
> Care to share some of your "first-hand experiences", Mr. Borden?
>
>
>
>
>
> Or perhaps I should share some of mine . . . after spending 30+ days in
> the waiting room of Sacred Heart Medical Center's ICU (12/15/2011 -
> 1/17/2012), like . . .
>
>
>
>
>
> . . . the one I mentioned earlier concerning the patient, whose activity
> on the left side of his brain was ever so slowly recovering, and his
> mother who was extremely concerned about how her son's medical care was
> going to be financed . . . two months after he was laid off, and
>
>
>
>
>
> . . . the family who, while their father lay terminally ill not fifty feet
> down the ICU hallway, were openly discussing who was going to contribute
> how much to pay their father's medical bills, after having already cashed
> in his life insurance, and . . .
>
>
>
>
>
> . . . remember that fatal accident that happened about two miles outside
> of Reardan, Washington (reported in the Spokesman-Review) on New Year's
> Eve. The critically injured were transported to SHMC ER and in to ICU.
> Talk about a reality wake-up call . . .
>
>
>
>
>
> Care to share yours with us, Mr. Borden?
>
>
>
>
>
> Seeya later, Moscow.
>
>
>
> Tom Hansen
>
> Post Falls, Idaho
>
>
>
> "If not us, who?
>
> If not now, when?"
>
>
>
> - Unknown
>
>
> On Jan 18, 2012, at 11:35 AM, "Jay Borden" <jborden at datawedge.com> wrote:
>
> I can tell you first-hand my experiences on how human behavior changes as
> soon as fiscal responsibility to pay is shifted to the individual as
> opposed to a faceless 3rd party.
>
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL:
> <http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20120118/6cc205af/attachment-0001.html>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:45:41 -0800
> From: keely emerinemix <kjajmix1 at msn.com>
> To: <jborden at datawedge.com>, <donovanjarnold2005 at yahoo.com>,
> <vision2020 at moscow.com>
> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] More Proof Preventative Health Care Saves
> Message-ID: <COL105-W25A82FA02ACE754F52442582810 at phx.gbl>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>
>
> I think, Jay, we have all seen a multitude of examples of "people making
> BAD decisions" in the healthcare climate we endure these days in the U.S.
> Most of the time, those decisions are made by insurers, whose approach to
> market-driven, business-model healthcare counts every single cost except
> for the very real personal costs inflicted on sick people.
>
> I don't see the truth in your example that using "other people's money" in
> healthcare distribution is like you and me going to a restaurant and my
> ordering not the lobster I would've if I'd known you were paying and,
> lacking that knowledge, ordering only the soup-and-sandwich combo. Bad
> manners in social interactions are not the same thing as denying people
> access to preventative care that not only spends healthcare dollars wisely
> in prevention and early diagnosis, with better treatment outcomes, as well
> as empowers people to manage their own personal health. You seem to
> believe that the indignation I might feel that someone "orders up" if I'm
> paying is at all analogous to having access to and making use of
> comprehensive preventative, diagnostic, and treatment options that by
> every standard improves the life -- and life expectancy -- of the patient.
> It isn't.
>
> I cannot imagine a scenario under which people "pig out" by availing
> themselves of "other people's money" -- which, given the tax-supported
> nature of government involvement in healthcare is actually THEIR own
> money -- to pay for their scooping up each and every test possible.
> You're aware, I know, that most diagnostic tests are ordered by doctors
> themselves, not by patients. In other words, while I might call and
> schedule my own mammogram (at my doctor's recommendation), I can't just
> wake up one morning and decide that an MRI would be a fun way to pass the
> day. No, those tests are ordered by physicians. I suspect you haven't
> had the experience of having your doctor suggest that you have an MRI to
> pinpoint the source of your pain, or a complete blood panel to rule out
> leukemia, only to have to tell her/him that you can't afford it -- either
> because you're uninsured, or because you carry a $10,000 family deductible
> and can't come up with your share of the cost. Further, i!
> t's hard for me to imagine that you actually envision a world in which
> "too much" medical care is a bad thing, unless, of course, you're in the
> camp that believes that Grandma really ought to have to have her case
> reviewed by managers disinclined to spend money on an 80-year-old. If
> you're at all "pro-life," you're not. But you tell me.
>
> Finally, I think that you and I would measure the moral strength of a
> country in different ways. You seem to think that the market-driven,
> frankly discriminatory stinginess now evident in the way this nation deals
> with healthcare is not only a good business model, but an honorable way to
> have its citizens deal with each other -- and not as equals or as
> co-citizens, but in a hierarchical model that ensures that those in power,
> those who are not doctors, those who control the pursestrings and thus
> make life-and-death decisions that result in death, not life, are entitled
> to inflict a business model on people who are only "customers," disposable
> and easily forgotten. I disagree. The measure of this nation's moral
> character is when the gap between the have's and the have-not's, while
> evident in other areas, should never result in the acceptability of early
> death and prolonged suffering because it makes business sense to people
> whose healthcare needs are immune to the "silent !
> hand of the market." That, I'd never apologize for. I'm just amazed that
> you and others would defend it.
>
> Keely
> www.keely-prevailingwinds.com
>
>
> Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:35:41 -0800
> From: jborden at datawedge.com
> To: donovanjarnold2005 at yahoo.com; vision2020 at moscow.com
> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] More Proof Preventative Health Care Saves
>
>
>
> It sounds great? the math might be right, but I believe the human nature
> component is wrong? human nature changes when dealing with ?other people?s
> money?. (?Oh, if I had known you were paying for dinner, I would have
> ordered something more expensive??) Putting the word ?preventative? in the
> name doesn?t change the way humans would react to and use it. If we had
> universal health care, it means that individuals would never see the
> benefit of money saved? they would simply be given a ?blank check? in
> terms of their health care and how they care for themselves? and therefore
> dismiss risks with personal choices for their health. I can tell you
> first-hand my experiences on how human behavior changes as soon as fiscal
> responsibility to pay is shifted to the individual as opposed to a
> faceless 3rd party. It?s sounds heartless to say (and even harder to
> defend)? but in order to have people making GOOD decisions, you have to
> have examples of people making BAD DECISIONS. Jay !
> From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com
> [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com] On Behalf Of Donovan Arnold
> Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 10:56 AM
> To: vision2020 at moscow.com
> Subject: [Vision2020] More Proof Preventative Health Care Saves Numbers
> show high cost of skipping your medsNumbers show how skipping your meds
> can have serious health impact, financial consequences
> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/numbers-show-high-cost-skipping-214621515.html
> "?Every dollar spent on medication decreases total health costs to
> patients, insurers and government health programs by about $10.10 for
> people with high blood pressure, by $8.40 for congestive heart failure
> patients, by $6.70 for diabetics and by about $3.10 for patients with
> cholesterol disorders." And what idiots would pass up $3.10 to $10.10
> return on each $1 invested? The same idiots that pass up universal
> preventive health care. The same idiots that believe it is better to pay
> $10.10 of taxpayer dollars in medical treatment tomorrow than to a give
> the person the opportunity of insurance to spend $1 on medication today.
> But when your interests lie with the person who gets the $10.10, only then
> it be!
> comes clear why denying them the insurance to get the medication is the
> preferred action. Donovan Arnold
> =======================================================
> List services made available by First Step Internet,
> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
> http://www.fsr.net
> mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
> =======================================================
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL:
> <http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20120118/524eca42/attachment.html>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> =======================================================
> List services made available by First Step Internet,
> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
> http://www.fsr.net
> mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
> =======================================================
>
> End of Vision2020 Digest, Vol 67, Issue 249
> *******************************************
>
>
> -----
> No virus found in this message.
> Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
> Version: 10.0.1416 / Virus Database: 2109/4751 - Release Date: 01/18/12
>
More information about the Vision2020
mailing list