Health Care Success – Establishing the framework to make health care work. Chapter 1

Summary: How we structure the fundamental continuum between individual freedom and social outcomes makes a significant difference in the quality of health care that is available.

A dear friend of mine who is smart, caring and innovative recently took up the cause of Universal Health Care in a Facebook entry. I sent her an email listing some of the problems of Universal Health Care. She responded with "So you think we should...?"

This exchange gave me the opportunity to take a look at my assumptions and the root cause of our differences. The result of that analysis is this series on health care. I want to uncover the core concepts that drive our disagreement in a way that we can better understand each other and produce more light than heat.

My discussions with people, whose health care solutions are polarized, reveal two fundamentally different starting points. Those that support universal health care talk about outcomes such as free health care for the poor and lowering costs to everyone. The problem as they see it is simple – high numbers of people lack adequate health care and the solution is to pass laws that make health care available to all who need it. Those that oppose universal health care tend to distrust Washington to manage such a complex structure and prefer the market place to provide these services. It recommends tweaks to the current health care systems such as Health Savings Accounts.

My goal for this article series is to clarify the assumptions of both ends of this spectrum. If this is done well, it will give everyone a better understanding of their own position and move the debate from symptom to values. At best, this will produce a more productive conversation because common values can be agreed upon (i.e. most of us want the best health care for the most people possible.) Once we agree on our shared value, can be more flexible about a wider range of solutions. At worst, we will realize that our values are incompatible and we can stop wasting time arguing about strategy.

For those who desire the best health care for the most people, I will then introduce the concept of complex adaptive system, also known as complexity science. I will show how it works in other critical areas of our lives then I will expand this model into health care and demonstrate that we can have our cake and eat it too.