Introduction to the Helthe Cearu Reform Blog

Introduction
You may be wondering what "helthe cearu" means. I have chosen to write my Business Organizations course blog on health care reform in the United States. It seemed a bit boring to just title it "Health Care Reform," so I looked up the etymology of the words health and care. The words "helthe" and "cearu" are Middle English and Old English respectively. Interestingly, helthe is derived from the word "whole."

Why Health Care Reform
I chose this topic as it is front and center in public discourse in our country. We all need health care, and we have all benefitted from it. Having access to health care affects us all in one way or another. It also affects businesses, from sole proprietorships to multi-national corporations.

A number of years ago, I took two college courses that had a profound affect on my outlook on capitalism and general economics. One of these was a social philosophy course, Social Justice and Economic Distribution. Probably the most salient point I took away from this course was how equal access to quality education and health care were of paramount importance to having a productive society. The other course was a graduate course in economics that combined micro- and macroeconomics. I basically came away from this course with the same message as the social philosophy course.

What is startling to me about these two courses and the way in which they were taught is that the instructors could not have been more different. Not surprisingly, the social philosophy professor was an avowed Marxist. The economics professor was a conservative South Carolinian, but his message was the same as the Marxist's. The message that an educated and healthy society is a productive society has stayed with me all these years.

My Experiences with Health Care
I have had a couple of experiences that make me somewhat wary of for-profit health care businesses. In the late 1980s, I worked for a health maintenance organization in California (which shall remain nameless), in the accounts receivable department. I maintained many accounts for large and small companies in the Los Angeles area. I knew how much each company paid per employee per premium, and I knew exactly how much coverage each company bought for their employees. I also knew how much each employee had to pay for her health coverage. In thinking about all of this, I was struck by how different each policy was. The larger companies usually paid less per premium than the smaller companies. In this mix, I also was privy to how much it cost my company for each policy, and the company was making a nice profit.

While working for this same company, I was horrified to learn that the people making the initial decisions as to approval/denial of a procedure had no medical experience. Let me repeat that--the people making the initial determination of approval or denial of a medical procedure had no medical training. These front-line clerks made more money than those of us in receivables, and we all planned to eventually move into these positions as they became available.

Another rather unsettling job I had was as an account supervisor for a supposedly non-profit pharmaceutical development center affiliated with a medical college. Again, I will not reveal the name of this outfit. The center made clinical trial drugs for major pharmaceutical companies. As the account supervisor, I knew how much money it cost us to develop these drugs, and I knew how much we billed the drug companies. When I questioned my boss about the discrepancy between these two matters, he told me that because drug companies made such a profit, it was no big deal to charge them what we did. I had more of a conscience than he did, but I was also concerned about compliance issues--we were non-profit after all.

A different experience of mine has to do with utilizing the VA health care system. I am a veteran, and I have used the VA extensively, both in California and now in Ohio. Once the VA changed to a managed care model, I have had nothing but praise for the care I have received. I have never had my care rationed at the VA, and though it is a gargantuan system, I have been more than satisfied with the way in which it has been run.

So, this is my introduction to my blog. I will be posting items from a myriad of Web sites, conservative and liberal and non-partisan.