Ray Moistner, Executive Director of the Indiana Hardwood Lumbermen's Association, takes us into an old, but critical industry contributing to our state’s economy on this week’s Who Gets What? podcast. Join us with Ray to learn about the role our forest products continue to play at mortonjohn.libsyn.com.
Everybody knows that healthcare costs are too high, hospital and medical office parking lots are too crowded, medications cost too much, and there is too much drama in hospital corridors. Fortunately, everybody has a solution, although not everyone is willing to step forward and speak up.

Right here, right now, let’s look at what needs to be done. The answer is before us, if we had the courage to apply it. Automation! Replace people with machinery! Modernize and homogenize!

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has offered us the data; now let’s use them. As of 2022, this nation had 14.7 million persons in healthcare occupations. That approaches 10% of the employed workforce.

The top 25 occupations included 12.8 million jobs (87%) of that total. Registered nurses, their assistants, and aides numbered 6.0 million (47%) of that healthcare corps. Naturally, much of what they do is of consequence. But when you’re pressing that buzzer for their attention, where are they?

We know where they are. We have seen them on our TV screens for decades engaging in hijinks, celebrating, commiserating and solving problems caused by soft-headed administrators. We learned from MASH, that most revealing documentary of the Korean Police Action, and from St. Denis, the contemporary understaffed, underfunded Oregon medical facility, healthcare is a great source for laughs.

What’s to be done? Get to the root of the problem. Return to those thrilling days of yesteryear when we were not afflicted with new vaccines annually. Perhaps each hospitalized patient does not require an extensive menu. Why do we suspect that a hospital stay may increase mortality?

Our ancestors suffered with great pain, but the empathetic doctors of today are quick to order analgesics. Where once we were treated at home and ignored by our families, today we are whisked off to an institution that specializes in overhead, luxury accommodations, and ignored by paid caregivers.

Yes, healthcare is expensive because we have so much in the way of inputs that may or may not be related to outcomes. Or, to put it differently, what outcomes are desired by the businesses engaged in healthcare?

We support for-profit and not-for-profit organizations, from the mega-giant system to the individual practitioner. Economies of scale rule in the back-office and brand names are promoted as signatures of excellence.

The financing of healthcare is detached from the provision of healthcare. My doctor, a really nice fellow, doesn’t work for my insurance company or for Medicare, and is expected to hand me off to a narrowly focused specialist whenever possible. He works for a logo tangentially related to an athletic department.

Is it just nostalgia or might there be a reason to restore a less complex, less automated, more human scale to healthcare?
Morton J. Marcus is an economist formerly with the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. His column appears in Indiana newspapers, and his views can be followed his podcast.

© 2024 Morton J. Marcus

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