The New Health Age

In the United States the discussion about health care has largely been driven by fear misinformation and manipulated by politicians Any discussion driven by these three forces is not an intelligent one That is why Jonathan Fleece and I have written quotThe New Health Age The Future of Health Care in Americaquot We wanted to write a book that would bring intelligence and understanding to the conversation about the future of health care in America As the quotes here show this book is already being called THE book to read to better understand and feel comfortable about the future landscape of health care in AmericaMost people don39t realize that modern medicine is about 150 years old In 1865 Louis Pasteur identified germs as a significant cause of disease The BandAid was invented in 1920 penicillin in 1928 and the first flu vaccine in 1948 Cat scans were first used in the late 1970s So modern medicine is recent and is undergoing constant breakthroughs The current and soon to come medical miracles will usher in this New Health Age and will change how we think of both medicine and health careSo to break through the stupid politically manipulated current discussion about health care in this country during an election year it is important to understand some basic conceptsHealth care costs are out of control We have all heard the phrase quotan ounce of prevention is worth a pound of curequot We have had a health care system that is largely based upon the pound of cure Prevention is now becoming a dominant theme moving us to an ounce of prevention modelThere are some 18000 codes for procedures that physicians use to get paid There is not a single code for payment on keeping a patient healthy That is about to change Primary care physicians the ones who know the patient best will become central to the new health care delivery system and will actually get paid for doing what they are supposed to do keep their patients healthyOne third of all American adults are obese and two thirds are overweight70 of all American health care costs are incurred by 10 of the population Most of these people suffer from afflictions due to obesity as it leads to heart disease high blood pressure diabetes and joint disease Successfully treat 1 and we lower total health care costs by 7The average cost to a company for the health care of an employee is 12000 That is one of the reasons why American companies are not globally competitive We are the only developed nation in the world without a universal health care system This means that American companies have a higher cost structure than their global competitors This is one of the reasons that health care reform has finally happened America has lost a lot of its global competitive edgeHealth care represents almost 18 of America39s GDP All of the technology driven innovation we have come to accept in the 80 of the GDP is now coming to health care Digital records search connectivity convenience efficiency and the ability to compare performance all things we now demand in the rest of our lives are now coming to health care It is almost that simple The medical profession and health care delivery are now about to catch up to how we expect the rest of the marketplace and economy to operate Open markets competition cost benefit analysis the power of the free market to both increase quality and drive down costs All of this is now coming to health care Health will increase and after a short transition period costs will go downI will be writing more columns here about the New Health Age as it is such an exciting timeYou can find out more information about The New Health Age here and hereIf you care to order the book quotThe New Health Age The Future of Health Care in Americaquot it is not yet in bookstores but is available at Amazon and BNcomWelcome to the New Health AgeDavid Houle is a futurist strategist and speaker He has always been slightly ahead of the curve Houle spent more than 20 years in media and entertainment Most recently David is a featured contributor to Oprahcom Check is out here wwwoprahcomdavidhoule David can be contacted at DavidDavidHoulecomRead all Davidamp8217s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Evolution ShiftCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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The New Health Age

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David Houle

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