Health Reform – Not So Fast

Imagine that you’ve gone to your local area hospital Emergency Department with excruciating abdominal pain. You don’t know what’s going on, all you know is that your doubled over in the most pain you’ve ever had.  What would you think if the physician, without knowing much more than your age and weight, immediately gave you a large dose of Morphine, thereby taking away your pain. Would you be satisfied? Would that be all you needed?  After all you came to the ER because of pain and now your pain is gone, shouldn’t you be OK with that?  Anyone willing to accept that treatment as sufficient and final? 

This is precisely the situation in which we find ourselves.  We have some pain of approximately 40 million people without health insurance (which, by the way, I don’t believe) and Obama wants to give us a big shot to take away the pain.  What if that pain is trying to tell us something we need to know?  What if the “cure” of removing the pain ends up masking a greater need that in the end gets worse and more expensieve?   As you struggle to manage your affairs of your family and love ones, you are already subidizing indigent care either through your existing tax burden or through the prices you pay when you do go to the hospital.  It may be untidy, but additional government intervention won’t make that any better, just more expensive.

Only when you are convinced that somehow people become infinately more intelligent and equally more magnaminous when they work for the government, does government healthcare make sense.  You would also have to abandon any effort to improve efficiency, because improvements in efficiency are the result of people struggling with the pain of inefficiency.  With the government involved, the pain goes away because it is shifted to the taxpayer. 

If, however, you suspect that government people are not much different from you and I, then the notion of governent intervention in healthcare is much less comforting than one might hope.  Government healthcare may allow you to feel comfortable for a while, that is until you are actually sick.

Finally, do not think for a moment that being uninsured means that anyone is going on without basic healthcare.  If they are, it is not because we don’t care, but maybe that they don’t care; that is, it’s just not that important.  There are a multiple of choices for people to receive the basic care they require that doesn’t involve a large amount of money.  Sure the wait will be longer, and you may not see the physician or care giver you preferr, but it’s good care all the same.

In the end, the government is seeking to promote a crisis that does not exist, so they can provide if not impose a solution only 13% of the US needs.  The solution may not be a good one, and it may not work, but that’s not important, they just want a “solution”.  This is about a few people feeling good about themselves and nothing more.

Thomas A. Coss, RN

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July 30, 2009 | Tom | No Comments »

Senate Committee on Healthcare Reform

Senate Committee sent out an incomplete healthcare reform bill today seeking approval by the entire Senate.  This is the latest in a series of Potemkin Villages the president can view while bobbing along in his dingie propelled by two oars: self importance on one side and hubris on the other.

There was a time in our history when 9 out of 10 people in the US worked in agriculture and some how the government didn’t see a need to reform agriculture.  Similary, general manufacturing peeked in the use peeked in 1958 with over 40% of the us labor force working in manufacturing, where was the crisis then?  Now with healthcare involved in 17% of our GDP and less about 10% of the US labor force, somehow we need “reform”, I’m not buying it. 

For this to work, you must first believe that when smart people enter into government services they somehow become infinately more intelligent, and therefore better positioned to make your medical decissions.  If that is your beilef, please inform me of any situation in which that exists.  I would love to see it.

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July 15, 2009 | garrett | No Comments »

Texting and Efficiency – This is Just The Beginning

“This message of twenty four words and 138 total characters takes you less than five seconds to consume, that is why texting is popular.”

According to a University of Pennsylvania study, the speed with which we consume information from our eyes to the visual cortex in the brain is approximately 10 megabytes per second, we hear at roughly one tenth that speed or a rate of about 102 kilobytes per second. 

Just think how drastically communication has changed over the past 35 years.  The first email went out in 1971, still it would take nearly 30 years before email became pervasive in society.  In the mid 1990’s business still depended heavily upon voice mail, a slow and often annoying means of sharing information with colleagues in a time shifted manner.  The annoying part came when people, seeking to gain favor with superiors, would copy everyone on the message.  That copying continues today in email but in that there is hope.  

In December of 1992 the first text message was sent via SMS or Simple Messaging Services. During the second quarter of 2008, AT&T reported that more text messages were sent from cell phones than actual calls.  Texting is becoming a preferred means of communicating short messages from person to person. On June 9 of this year the US Senate held hearings from the major telephone operators in regard to pricing of texting services offered customers, and it is from those hearings that this story unfolds.

Though providers charge 20 cents per text when the individual has not chosen a texting plan, those people represent less than 1% of users.  The average price per text is around a penny.  The cost of providing that text is estimated to be about 0.0325 cents per text, providing the carriers with a very handsome gross margin of nearly 70%.  Still, what really matters is that texting is growing at a rate approaching 50% per month and that texting is seen as fast and efficient.

This past 4th of July weekend I spent some valuable time with my daughter (16) and five of her friends.  For a few minutes I was able to discuss with them their texting behavior, preferences and general insights into text messaging.  Texting, it turns out, has a lot of benefits besides being efficient or quick to consume.  It’s private for one, often more priviate than email, and it can be consumed discretely “even during church” according to one of the girls I interviewed. Texting has perseverence, it stays on ones handset and can be accessed at a later time.  This is an added value to texting not commonly considered and from a marketing perspective, holds great promise.

The point of all this is that texting is more than the electronic version of sending notes among young kids in high school.  Texting is important because it is succinct and so very quickly consumed.   Character length constrictions force a succinctness that is greatly needed in communication, while also improving upon the speed by which the message is consumed. That same message above could be re-written:

“This msg of 24 wds & 138 characters takes u less than 5 secs to consume, thats y txtng is popular”

This version is now down to 21 words and 95 characters, a character reduction of 32%, while still clearly conveying the same message, only instead of taking you 5 seconds to consume, you consumed it in about 3.  With the abundance of information thrown at us on a daily basis, anything that eases its consumption is good news indeed.

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July 8, 2009 | Tom | No Comments »