A truly rambling post that’s really about energy independence and sustainability:
One of my questions about our current system of health care payments and proposed changes is, “Why should answers from the insurance lobby be part of any important debate?” (Truthdig published this opinion on the subject today.)
To sidetrack the whole discussion, why not get the perspective of a clean energy activist? I’ve been reading Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman, and came across the excerpt below on health care innovations versus energy innovations. What it reveals is that the profit motive has driven real advances in health care technology. (The profit motive has also led insurance companies to continually raise premiums, restrict access to care, and deny payments for some of these innovations.)
Friedman, in Hot, Flat and Crowded, Chapter 11, The Stone Age Didn’t End Because We Ran Out of Stones:
…Jeffrey Immelt, chairman and CEO of General Electric…has worked for General Electric for twenty-six years. In those twenty-six years, he has seen “eight or nine” generations of inovation in medical technology in GE’s health care business – in devices like X-ray equipment, MRIs, or CAT scans – because the government and the health ecare market created prices, incentives, and competition that drove a constant flow of invention. It was very profitable to innovate in this field and fairly easy to jump in. But in power? said Immelt. One – one generation of real innovation is all that he has seen.
“Today, on the power side,” said the GE chairman, “we’re still selling the same basic coal-fired power plants we had when I arrived.They’re a little cleaner and more efficient now, but basically the same model.”
Nine generations of innovation in health care – one in power systems. What does that tell you? It tells you that you have a market that simply has not been shaped to produce clean energy innovation.
Would the health, and savings, of Americans be threatened by redirecting some incentives for health care advances toward clean energy? Can this country afford to stop treating the health care system as something to be protected for the sake of shareholders? What if the amount of attention and money spent on protecting the status quo in health care payment systems went into creating venture capital for clean energy innovations?