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Missouri Foundation for Health Raises Important Questions About Health Care Reform

By: Jennifer Brinkmann | 03/04/2010

When we engage with a new client and begin our process of inquiry, we always try to identify the right questions to ask.  If you ask the right questions, the answers to the tough strategic questions reveal themselves.  In fact, we encourage team members not to jump to answers.  Instead, focus on the questions.

Listening to this morning's presentation by the Missouri Foundation for Health at the St. Louis Business Journal Seminar about healthcare reform, it occurred to me that as a citizen in this country, I hadn't gone through my own process of inquiry related to this important issue.  I had jumped to a conclusion about the right answer based on my own political tendencies.

During the presentation, Dr. James Kimmey, president and CEO of the Missouri Foundation for Health, talked about affordability of healthcare.  He made me wonder:  What percentage of my household income should I spend on health care? According to Kimmey and his colleagues, if I'm like most Americans, I spend around 19 percent of my household income on healthcare today.  

I have never done the math to know exactly how much of my family's budget goes to premiums and out-of-pocket expenses, but I know it's significant.  Yet, somehow, in this entire healthcare debate, I have not given much consideration to what I think is affordable for my family or other families.  What percentage of our income should we spend on health care, compared to housing, food or transportation?  The legislation currently suggests up to 10 percent of household income be allocated to healthcare.  Does this sound reasonable? I'm not sure, but I do know I'm uncomfortable with the current 19 percent.  

If you want to find a way to evaluate the health care legislation and cut through the political rhetoric, I encourage you to view this morning's presentation .  Let us know if it raises new questions for you that make you think of health care reform in a new light. After all, it's through the questions that we each can draw our own conclusions about the right solutions.   

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