|
||||||
   
|
 |
 |
 |
Healthcare: Condition Critical?Bill Feyling, Chairman Welfare Trust FundOur country is in the throes of a national debate about healthcare. Clearly, we need some bold, large-scale reforms in this industry if we are to have meaningful, sustainable benefits for our members in the future. Consider, for example, a handful of facts about healthcare in the United States to put things in perspective. Since 1999, the average cost of healthcare has more than doubled. Just 31 percent of large firms (200 or more workers) even offer retiree health benefits. That’s less than half of the 66 percent that did so in 1988, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Employee Health Benefits: 2008 Annual Survey. In the 1999 landmark report, “To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health Care System,” the Institute of Medicine estimated that as many as 98,000 people died in hospitals each year as a result of medical errors that could have been prevented. Ten years later, Consumer Reports find little evidence of progress, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that hospital-acquired infections kill 99,000 people each year. Members of our Union know the unsustainable inflation in costs all too well as we have seen our health and welfare contribution rise from $3.90 per hour in 1999 to over $9.00 per hour today. We must also ask the question, how many of those preventable deaths were our brothers and sisters, or their loved ones? Would other industries be treated like the healthcare industry if they behaved in a similar fashion? The 98,000 preventable deaths per year have been compared to two fully loaded 747s crashing, killing everyone on board, every three days for an entire year. What would happen if commercial aircraft started falling out of the sky? I’m sure every airline CEO would be summoned to Capitol Hill, the public would demand answers, investigations would be launched, regulations passed with the greatest urgency. Yet the healthcare industry continues to roll along with no major reform year after year. In fact, some people say the current effort is “moving too fast.” A few years ago my father checked into a well-respected Bay Area hospital for “routine” knee replacement. The operation seemed to go well, but the knee soon developed a massive infection, acquired in the hospital. That led to a three-week stay in the hospital where he was pumped full of powerful antibiotics until the infection finally subsided. The insurance paid the hospital for the original operation. The insurance also paid for the three-week hospital stay that was required due to the preventable hospital-acquired infection. What if the construction industry attempted to operate in a similar manner? Think about it. A contractor builds a school for $100 million. A week after the school opens the roof on the gymnasium collapses. The contractor says, “Give me another $20 million, and I’ll come back and fix your roof.” Unthinkable! But in the healthcare industry, that is exactly how it works. At the same time, medical costs continue to rise at an inflation rate that is at least twice the consumer price index. Another huge area of concern is the question of whether we are receiving the appropriate care from the current system. According to the Institute of Medicine/National Academy of Engineering, in a 2005 report, “Building a Better Delivery System: A New Engineering/Health Care Partnership,” an estimated 30 to 40 cents of every dollar we spend on healthcare is spent on unnecessary and even unsafe care! For the carpenter, that’s potentially $3.00 per hour that we spend on health and welfare that could be redirected to wages or pension. So what do we do? There are a lot of ideas out there right now, and members have a lot of different opinions. Everyone needs to study the issues and make up their own minds, but I would submit that small-scale, incremental tweaks will not do. This country needs sweeping change in the system if we mean to offer substantive—and sustainable—healthcare for all our people in the future. Want to learn more?
|
||
 |
 |
 |