Blog #8

"Health Care for a Changing Work Force"

In today's world, many Americans don't have jobs in the traditional sense. In fact, around 42 million people in the US work as an independent contractor, freelancer, etc. A major problem with this is that these 42 million people are outcasts from the traditional system of benefits, such as health care, that provide economic security to Americans.

Someone who has recognized this major problem early and has acted on it was Sara Horowitz, the founder of the Freelancers Union. In the early 1990s, she recognized that the number of people turning to independent work was on the rise and that there was no institution to represent these people in a meaningful way. Horowitz had the idea to create an organization to bring freelancers together so they could wield their power in the marketplace and in the political arena. She saw that she could attract a large membership if she could figure out how to provide health insurance at lower cost.

Health insurance companies don’t have much love for freelancers. They prefer to serve large groups because it’s easier to deal with one corporate benefits manager than a multitude of individuals. Horowitz got the idea of grouping freelancers in New York State so they could purchase their health insurance together and get the premium insurance at lower cost. Today, the Freelancers Insurance Company, which is wholly owned by the Freelancers Union, has revenues of roughly $100 million and covers 25,000 independent workers and their family members in New York State.

We as a nation need to take this idea and expand on it so we could cover the entire population with premium health insurance at a reasonable cost.

Blog #7

A major dilemma in the health care system is how patients rate their overall experience at the hospital.  To my surprise, Alabama has the best overall hospitals in the nation when it comes to patient’s ratings.  Patients in Alabama rated high the most in the nation at 70 percent and only rated the hospitals 9 percent of the time at the low rating.  Also to my surprise, three of the biggest states are amongst the worst in overall hospitals in the nation when it comes to patient’s ratings.  Florida, New York, and California rate amongst the lowest in high ratings and the highest in low rating.  New York patients rated their hospitals high only 55 percent of the time and low 14 percent of the time.  Florida patients rated their hospitals high only 57 percent of the time and rated low, a pathetic 16 percent of the time.  California is a little better than New York and Florida, but still very bad with only 60 percent high ratings and 12 percent low ratings.

I found this case study important because we as a nation spend so much money on health care, but still don’t get high overall quality care from our hospitals according to us.  It is absolutely pathetic that the state with the highest high overall rating is only at 70 percent.  70 percent high rating should be at worse, the low of the range for high ratings, not the high of the range.  No one in this country should feel that their overall treatment at a hospital was low, yet every state had at least 7 percent of its patients rate their treatment low.  Nevada really needs to get their act together, having 20 percent of its patients rate their treatment a six or below.  How does a nation with so much technology and advances in health care do so poorly in treating patients?

In conclusion, hospitals around the nation do a pretty poor job treating patients according to the way patients have rated the hospitals overall.  Health care is one of the biggest expenditures in the nation and we have all this technology, yet we still rate our hospitals so poorly.  We as a country need to figure out how to improve conditions in health care so every state has a high rating of at least 85 percent and no state has a rating of six or below.