EISENHOWER'S LAST SMOKE
Originally published at EisenhowersLastSmoke.com on 5/13/2013)
Dwight David Eisenhower – the 34th president of the United States, five-star general and war hero, the father of the American super highway, and the great pragmatist. He was also a chain smoker who reportedly smoked four packs of cigarettes a day – in a time before warning labels or a clear scientific link between smoking and health hazards was established. In 1949, before he became president, Eisenhower’s personal physician advised him to cut back to one pack per day. After a few days limiting his smoking, he decided counting cigarettes was more difficult than not smoking at all, and quit “cold turkey”. With this decision, and the subsequent will to stick to it, he likely extended his life substantially.
Decades earlier, Eisenhower had also demonstrated command over his health care decisions. In his teenage years, after a knee injury had caused a severe infection, doctors urged an amputation. Eisenhower refused, and recovered. Whatever his reasons – fear, calculated risk-taking, stubbornness, or all three – he made his own decision and was willing to bear the consequences.
Eisenhower, as an early empowered health care decision maker, seems a fitting inspiration for my quest to improve the U.S health care system through consumer empowerment, not least because the fellowship created in his honor is supporting my particular journey. Eisenhower Fellowships (www.efworld.org) was formed in 1953 to celebrate Eisenhower’s 63rd birthday, in his first year as President. The organization was founded by a group of Pennsylvania businessmen as an international exchange program to honor Eisenhower’s dedication to world peace. Eisenhower Fellowships identifies, empowers, and links outstanding leaders from around the world, helping them achieve consequential outcomes across sectors and borders. Eisenhower called it “possibly the most splendid birthday present I have ever received.”
Anyone who interacts with the U.S. health care system, let alone works in it, knows the industry is ripe for some “consequential” changes. It is well known that the U.S. spends more than any other industrialized nation, as a percent of GDP as well as in absolute dollars, on health care, yet we have no better health outcomes to show for it.
There are numerous, interrelated causes for the health system’s underperformance, and seemingly infinite avenues for change. My passion, and my focus, is on how to empower consumers – to awaken Americans to the notion that they have direct and increasing financial responsibility for their health care decisions. With that financial responsibility comes a concept we know well in other consumer markets: market power. When consumers demand change, and vote with their wallets, the market often responds. My Eisenhower Fellowship will take me across the world – to Singapore and Australia – to explore how those countries’ systems and societies have effectively leveraged consumer power as a critical ingredient in their health systems’ success.
“Eisenhower’s Last Smoke” will chronicle my journey to find tools, strategies, and approaches to help American consumers make the right health care decisions for themselves. Whether the lessons other countries have to offer are small and incremental or broad and dramatic, I’ll be on the lookout for tangible solutions to help U.S. consumers bring about systemic improvements, in the spirit of Ike himself.
Originally published at EisenhowersLastSmoke.com on 5/13/2013)