Business For The Better

Health Care at a Lower Cost

2009-07-16T21:39:00.000-07:00

I read the WSJ's 7/15/09 article on the House's Health Care Plan, and I don’t understand how the plan would work.

Apparently the bill actually requires people to have health insurance. Is that regulation going to be enforced? Are my tax dollars actually going to fund the tracking of fugitives from health insurance? I might be able to support compelling parents to provide health insurance for their children so as not to take chances with their health care and I plan on maintaining health insurance coverage for myself, but if a competent adult decides not to do the same, I don't see why they shouldn't have that right.

Is all of this an effort to foster a market for lower cost health care? At what a cost! We can do better than this. Why doesn't everyone who wants to expand the coverage of health care spend their resources providing incentives to health care providers to offer low cost services rather than make everyone participate in this seriously flawed endeavor.

Apparently, the plan "would provide families earning up to $88,000 a year with subsidies to help them buy coverage." After all the trouble of what this bill plans to put in place, health care still wouldn't be cheap enough to be independently purchased by a family earning $88k?

Can't we, concerned citizens, find a better way to encourage low cost health care in this country? Organizations raise money for health care all the time. Let's do it in a way that would help the industry find the models that work for providing health care at lower costs.

If we had a million dollars to give away to the providers that make health care affordable what would we do? Give some to physicians who give an effective physical examination at the lowest price? (How would we make sure the quality was high?) Give some to an insurance company that offers a certain standard of coverage at the lowest price? (What would the standard of coverage be?) Give some to the hospital that charges the lowest amount for a given "basket" of services? (What would comprise the "basket" of services?) This industry likes to make money as much as any other industry does. I think it will respond, and that the answer is behind these questions. Any thoughts?

Who is tackling the retraining of laid-off manufacturing workers?

2009-07-15T19:21:00.000-07:00

Since this topic was raised on our site, I've looked for content on retraining manufacturing workers and haven't come up with anything. Most of the discourse on the loss of jobs overseas seems to involve free-trade policies. I can understand the desire to wage battle over such policy issues, but I think the manufacturing sector would be well served (even "better" served) by having some organization address the need for retraining the workforce. I'd appreciate it if anyone with any comment to share would do so, whether to offer some insight into the market for retraining workers or to pose an alternative solution. In the meantime, I'll keep reaching out.

Sustainable Transportation

2009-07-13T19:39:00.000-07:00

We had an anonymous comment suggesting "Companies should offer an incentive for people to carpool or take public transportation to work." Many would agree that transportation needs to become more sustainable, even if it's just to reduce traffic. For many of us, the commute to work is a significant amount of our monthly transportation. How can businesses make this better? I don't know how an incentive program for carpoolers or those taking public transportation would work. For example, what would keep people from claiming to carpool or take public transportation even when they didn't. Any thoughts on how to make such a program work?

Any other ideas for how we could support businesses that would make transportation more sustainable? Maybe if public transportation (i.e. trains, buses) were cheaper, it would be more commonly used. Perhaps it makes sense to reward a business that can transport people inexpensively. Or perhaps we should reward a business that can transport people quickly. Or both.

What do we mean by "organic"?

2009-07-08T18:48:00.000-07:00

To answer Vanisher's question, I checked out the following link, http://www.sustainabletable.org/2009/06/genetic-engineering/, which seems to suggest that, yes, the "organic" label excludes genetically engineered ("GE") ingredients. But for our purposes here, we don't necessarily need to refer to the USDA's "organic". There are other labels that describe how food is grown. Localharvest.org (a great site for finding locally grown food by zipcode) has a few brief descriptions of labels other than certified organic.

There's a lot wrong with the "organic" label. Just check out the highlights of a recent NY Post article as blogged at http://blogs.eugeneweekly.com/node/1167 . So perhaps "organic" cuts out some things we like and includes some things we don't like. The government had to compromise on what "organic" would mean. Nobody says that we as consumers, advocates, or activists need to compromise.

That being said, though I personally am not particularly anxious about the health and safety of GE foods themselves, I think that the industrial application of GE has some detrimental effects. (The sustainabletable.org link has some examples, as does Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma.)
I imagine grocery stores can track what is organic, but can they track what is "local"?

Retraining the Workforce - A private solution

2009-07-06T21:28:00.000-07:00

I think the solution is in the private sector company that Vanisher mentions. Vanisher mentions this company bidding on a contract with the government, but I think a company like that might ultimately thrive even without a government contract. They could be compensated in a number of different ways: training fees (at a very low cost) from the laid off workers (perhaps some type of insurance could cover the cost), finder's fee from the workforce's future employers for finding and training the new personnel, and a public relations fee from the former employer for diminishing the stigma of the layoff. (Would such an action also reduce unemployment payments from the former employer?) I think it could work. It might take a substantial investment to get the business model right, but I think it could work.

Speaking of "a substantial investment", to me the point is determining the best use of limited resources to address this issue. If we had a $1 million to spend to fix this problem, what should we do?
A - lobby the government to implement a program to retrain workforces,
B - give it directly to companies to spend on retraining workforces, or
C - give it to a company to invest in a business model to provide affordable retraining.
(There can also be a D, E, F, etc. Any other ideas?)
I see a lot of complexities in getting effective results out of solutions A & B above. As for C, businesses like this may already exist, and if an organization challenged them all to provide the most effective training at the lowest cost, rewarded the best company with a small prize, and established a pattern of holding similar contests over time for prizes of increasing amounts… the world might end up with a company that's fit to provide an uncommon service at a price the market will naturally bear. Thoughts?

Retraining our workforce

2009-07-01T07:48:00.000-07:00

The first comment posted on this site was this:

Vanisher said...
Businesses in sectors where labor is moving to lower cost overseas countries, such as manufacturing, should contribute to the job retraining of the workforce they are laying off.

June 23, 2009 5:20 AM

This strikes me as a very interesting issue, and I'm sure I don't know the half of it. Does anyone have any indication of how impactful the loss of jobs will be over the next 5, 10, 20 years?

I imagine this phenomenon will have a profound effect on many families, communities, and industries in the U.S. Vanisher is suggesting that businesses should bear some of this cost by 'contributing to the job retraining of the workforce they are laying off'. Does anybody have any idea how should such a program might work?

Keep the ideas coming, Encouraging local and organic foods in grocery stores

2009-06-29T17:53:00.000-07:00

I've heard a few great ideas (some of them have even been posted as comments). So far our ideas have been broad enough to apply to almost any business. That's great, but let's also hear the ideas that might only be applied more narrowly. When I think of what I would like businesses to do differently, I often think of very specific industries and companies. I have certain ideas for coffee shops and others for schools, auto manufacturers, hospitals, etc.

For example, I'd like grocery stores to increase the amount of goods they source from local, organic producers. The "local" aspect stimulates the local economy, including many small businesses, and dramatically reduces the amount of energy spent transporting goods across the country between the producer and the consumer. The "organic" aspect provides healthier food (I'm no expert, but this is what I've heard) and reduces the amount of chemicals that are a) produced, b) transported, and c) put in the ground. I'm not talking about all businesses, just grocery stores, but grocery stores do a lot of business, and I think a change like this would make a big difference.

So are there any ideas for coffee shops, schools, auto manufacturers, or hospitals. Are there any ideas regarding climate change, low income housing, habitat preservation, health care, education, or any other issue?

What do you think of encouraging the volume of local, organic goods at grocery stores? Are there any other ideas for growing the volume of local, organic food?

We'd like the world to be better.

2009-06-22T20:47:00.000-07:00

We'd like the world to be better. How do we expect it to happen? Some of us pin our hopes on the government, charities, and volunteers. Here, let's suggest that we can demand more of businesses to make the world better.

What do you think businesses should do to make the world better?