WSJ: Would Developing World’s Low-Cost Strategies Work in U.S.?

In my patent application for Medical Onshoring, I cite the work of Mother Teresa and C.K. Prahalad in India.

I'm not a genius -- I just try to use common sense.

BTW: about the WSJ's concern that being one S.D. from mean is issue -- getting no treatment is right off the chart.

Can cost-effective health-care measures that have worked in poorer countries be applied to in the U.S.?

That’s the question the WSJ asks amid the debate over how the U.S. can reign in health-care costs. It’s become clear that many stakeholders in the debate are in favor of figuring out what treatments and tests are most effective for patients but not limiting care based on cost. Read J&J CEO William Weldon’s letter on this topic in the Washington Post this morning.

One example the WSJ cites is a program run by an AIDS clinic in Alabama that improved its no-show rates dramatically by giving patients prompt appointments and conducting interviews to help determine what factors might make a patient less likely to come back, which mimicks a similar program set up in Zambia.

But many Americans believe that more expensive care is better than cheaper care, says the WSJ. And, there is also the question of whether speed and simplicity — qualities of care often valued in developing countries — mean as much in the U.S., especially if a trade-off is accuracy. For instance, will an $8 device that conducts “a critical blood test” in six minutes time with 90% accuracy, which will be used in India, Brazil and several African nations, supplant the $50 machine used in the U.S. whose accuracy is 97%?

“In the developing world, people are willing to make the trade-off in accuracy for simplicity and low cost,” William Rodriguez, who founded Daktari Technologies, makers of the low-cost device, told the WSJ. “In the U.S., that kind of trade-off is a hard sell.”

WSJ: Parsing the Health Reform Arguments

Some of the shibboleths we've heard in recent weeks don't make much sense.

The health-care debate continues. We have now heard from nearly all the politicians, experts and interested parties: doctors, drug makers, hospitals, insurance companies, even constitutional lawyers (though not, significantly, from trial lawyers, who know full well "change" is not coming to their practices). Here is how one humble economist sees some of the main arguments, which I have paraphrased below:

- "The American people overwhelmingly favor reform."

If you ask whether people would be happier if somebody else paid their medical bills, they generally say yes. But surveys on consumers' satisfaction with their quality of care show overwhelming support for the continuation of the present arrangement. The best proof of this is the belated recognition by the proponents of health-care reform that they need to promise people that they can keep what they have now.

Day 1 -- how the Missionairies of Charity (M/C) began

If there had been a Twitter from M/C Day 1 (October 1950), it might read like this --

Day 1: One donor. Two souls.

After twenty years as a teacher and principal at a Catholic girls high school in Calcutta -- neat, clean, professional middle-class -- Mother Teresa had a vision. A vision to serve the "poorest of the poor," in a world where human waste runs down streets to open sewers (think "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Angela's Ashes.")

With her vision -- she asked for, and received permission from, the Vatican to begin her religious order. And so --

Day 1: One donor. Two souls.

Two clients. Not 20, or 200, or 2,000. Just two.

Today -- 520 M/C offices in 100 countries. Following the break-through 1974 BBC series about the M/C by a self-admitted "dispirited war correspondent" in need of renewal.

The journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step. A balance of resources, belief, and faith.

How Mother Teresa operated worldwide

Per previous, once upon a time, someone whom I befriended volunteered for a year with Mother Teresa in Calcutta. I supported those efforts with many in-kind services (e.g., fund-raising, donations).

How was "Mom T" able to work in 100 countries, some of them Communist and anti-Catholic?

What I learned: she focused on hospice work. She did not make political statements, or criticized anyone, which would have led to confrontations.

Just focused on her hospice work for "the poorest of the poor."

IMHO, good advice. In this field, focus on caring. Politics and power are different issues.

WaPo: 2009 Health Care Reform -- good luck

A cautionary note ..

Because Congress has passed bill after bill on Obama's wish list and because Democrats hold overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate, some may think there can be no repetition of the fiasco of 1993-94, when Bill and Hillary Clinton saw their effort at health-care reform die without a whimper.

Insiders know better. Last week, I went to see the four top officials of the National Coalition on Health Care, perhaps the broadest consortium in the field, including labor, religious, professional and medical groups and a smattering of businesses. It has long advocated the kind of comprehensive overhaul of health care that Obama aims to achieve.

These advocates applaud administration efforts to engage the players in the insurance, hospital and pharmaceutical industries in their talks -- and the willingness of those groups to "stay at the table."

But once there is specific legislation, they say, each of these groups will start bargaining hard to protect its own interests. And some of them -- local hospitals, for example -- have real clout with members of Congress ..

Obama will have to carry much of the burden of advocacy himself -- if outside events don't intrude, as they did on Bill Clinton. The president has shown his willingness to bargain, signaling, for example, that he would now consider taxing some employer-provided benefits, an approach he denounced when John McCain endorsed it during the campaign.

But it will take much more than that to win what promises to be an epic struggle.

What my family learned, working with the Cree of Canada

My family served the Cree community as accountants, pre-gaming. What we learned:

• Shared spirituality -- different, yet shared.
• Working together - fairly, forthrightly.
• A love of nature.
• Self-governance -- as a separate, unique national entity that works cooperatively with other such entities.
• Awareness of the global community and the need to work together.
• Respect and forthrightness with others.

MedOn operating idol: Cleveland Clinic

What I gleaned from Cleveland Clinic's CEO about performance standards: either you're doing top-level work and giving 100% -- or you're preparing to leave.

And he points that goal at himself:

Tensions are so high that when Clinic leader Delos "Toby" Cosgrove was asked recently about possible layoffs, he responded passionately, banging his fist on the table.

"We have agonizingly thought this through," said Cosgrove, whose hospital system is one of the largest employers in Ohio with about 39,000 workers. "Our posture is we're going to do everything we possibly can to avoid layoffs here."