Health Reform: Top-Down or Bottom-Up?

One of President Obama's strengths is his openess to the ideas/insights of others. I am particularly pleased that Governor Sebelius will be part of that discussion. Research from the Ctr. for Women's Business Research shows that women business owners are more concerned about providing a health care safety net for their employees than are men employers. It is vital to have women leaders as part of this discussion.

There are many good recommendations provided by the panel on how the Obama administration should champion health care reform. There should be a strategic vision with a few set of principles agreed on by all key administration and congressional leaders. Michael MacCoby’s recommendation to include the five already agreed upon principles by the National Coalition on Health Care is a excellent start. I also believe we will miss a historic opportunity if we fail to accept Davis Walker’s sage advice. This should form the basis of developing a more comprehensive tactical plan that will implement the agreed upon strategic principles into an operational plan that health care system implementers can really accomplish. This is where most of the work will be a hard and tedious task.

Getting agreement on the nuts and bolts of implementing the strategic principles is the real outcome. This is where the recommendations by Roger Martin, Bill George, Abraham Zalenik and Andy Stern really come into play. However, I would go one step further and recommend that we ensure each strategic principle and tactical implementation plan gain concurrence by the other section participants and creators. This should be required for the plan to progress to the next step in the legislative approval process. This is also where Gen Monty and Howard Gardner know that “antibodies” can infect any process, poison it, and kill the end product if the exact details are too widely disseminated. If this happens then the recommendations by Benjamin Heineman and Marshall Goldsmith become operative. Tipping point leadership by key titular and institutional leaders will be critical when they are needed to right the ship of progress.

Finally, President Obama has at his disposal the one leadership tool that no other leader has – the bully pulpit. In this regard, he must first prepare the battlefield using this leadership tool as recommended by Jim Kouzes and Yash Gupta. President Obama must summon American leaders and people to a higher purpose and get their involvement in envisioning and creating an American health care system for the 21 century and beyond.

All I know is that I've been using medtipster.com to compare generics with my prescriptions. The site also allows you to type in your drug name, dosage and zip code to search for and locate prescription drugs that are available on discount generic programs across the United States; many of which are available for as little as $4. Prescriptions that are not available on a discounted program often have therapeutic alternatives on a discounted generic program as well.