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Kathleen O’Connor: Building Consensus on Health Care Reform by Roberta Greenwood

In a March 2008 Gallup Poll, only the war in Iraq and the economy outpaced Americans’ concerns about health care as the most pressing issue facing the United States in the coming year. As the national debate rages on, millions of Americans face yet another day without access to appropriate health care. Kathleen O’Connor, a former executive in the health care industry, Seattle author, consultant and co-founder of CodeBlueNow!, views this dilemma as a problem that can be fixed, and was willing to put up her own money to start the process.

A former columnist for the Seattle Times, O’Connor was struggling with the conclusion to her book, The Buck Stops Nowhere: Why America’s Health Care is All Dollars and No Sense, when a friend suggested she devise a contest to find a way to build a better health care system. Putting up $10,000 as prize money for the winning proposal, and funding a scholarship in memory of her son, Remi Miles Kaemke, for the best entry from a college team, O’Connor received 109 proposals. In 2003, an independent panel of judges selected University of Florida Professor Douglas Benn, D.D.S., Ph.D., as the first-place winner. Benn submitted two solutions to the problems in our health care system. (To read Dr. Benn’s proposals, go to www.codebluenow.org.)

Inspired by the innovative and often brilliant ideas of the contestants, O’Connor and a group of associates launched CodeBlueNow! (Code blue is the hospital code for a patient needing immediate resuscitation.) “We’re a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization,” explains O’Connor. “Contrary to what the politicians and media ask us to believe, we’re not a red/blue nation. We’re told so often about all the areas we don’t agree — when in truth, if you ask the American public, you hear the best solutions. Health care is no different; we can and must do better than we are doing now.” As the only national grassroots organization dedicated to building consensus and creating change in the health care system, CodeBlueNow! hopes to engage as many Americans as possible in the process of designing a health care plan that works.

For O’Connor, the decision to write a book came from her growing frustration with the health care community she served. With more than 30 years experience in various sectors of the industry, O’Connor attended innumerable medical conferences and conventions. As she participated in the same discussions over and over again, O’Connor recognized that nothing was changing. In 1932, a U.S. study concluded that our health care system was “disease-based and not prevention-based,” with too many specialists and not enough integration of care. “Can you believe that?” she asks. “Problems that existed more than 70 years ago still play a part in our health care delivery system today. It’s fundamentally flawed.”

So much so that O’Connor states that we don’t have a health care system in the United States — we have “health silos.” It’s a business-to-business model; independent programs are provided by state-regulated insurance systems for small businesses while large employers are often self-insured and only loosely monitored by the federal government. Add private insurance, Medicaid/Medicare and VA/Champs programs and it’s not hard to understand why most Americans believe this is a problem with no solution.

“We’ve been told this is too big a problem — it’s too large, too complicated to understand,” O’Connor exclaims. “That just isn’t true! Americans may feel disenfranchised or powerless, but it’s because they don’t trust our political system to deliver a responsible solution.” CodeBlueBNow! works with various national and local groups to partner for health care transformation and O’Connor believes this nonpartisan approach is the only way to effect sustainable change.

Working with such diverse groups as the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce, The Grange, and various corporate organizations, CodeBlueNow!, a recent recipient of a Google grant, seeks to involve everyday Americans in building a system that is “accountable, affordable, effective, efficient, safe and fair.” The organization’s first step was to pay for market research and establish baseline data that was gathered from its online survey, the “Pulse®.” Completed in Washington and Iowa in 2007, the Pulse survey will be utilized in public will-building campaigns in Washington and several other key states prior to the national elections. “We aim to be out of business by November 2010, when the U.S. House of Representatives and a third of the Senate are up for election,” says O’Connor. “Health care has been historically political in nature; we aim to build a bipartisan voter platform that will address the issues as defined by the American public.”

Those issues include guaranteeing a core set of health care services for all Americans. “Our survey results show us that almost everybody wants some form of universal coverage,” states O’Connor. “Even when participants indicate satisfaction with their own personal health care plans, they consistently want the same coverage for others in their community.” In addition to universal care, the Pulse survey results support a focus on prevention and health promotion, access to all licensed health care professionals, a reduction in the employer’s role in health insurance, decreases in administrative waste and cost, improvements in care (adjusting treatment as research indicates) and accountability for quality, access and cost. “People want to have cost-benefit information provided to them; they demand transparency,” she adds. “They want to know where the money is coming from and where it’s going.”

Not surprisingly, money, or the lack of it, plays a significant role in the current health care failure in America. Poverty and geography affect the health of millions of Americans. A recent study conducted by Harvard and the University of Washington found that life spans are showing a decline in the U.S. for the first time since 1918, and that geography and income are the main factors influencing the decline. Another finding, that over 26 million women live in counties showing either stagnant or shortened life spans, is one the researchers deemed “shocking.” The conclusion of the study? America is getting a “real wake-up call for its health care policy.” O’Connor and CodeBlueNow! couldn’t agree more. “Our goal is to create the will for change,” O’Connor says. “We plan to gather substantive information, offer health system models that work, and mobilize individuals to advocate for reforms that the public can support.” She urges women to get involved, reminding anyone who’ll listen that women make 75 to 80 percent of all health care decisions in the U.S. “Women must become health care advocates,” she says. “Find out how your health plan works before you need it. Get involved, ask questions. Know your family health history, get annual exams, and develop and maintain healthy diet and activity plans.”

O’Connor and the CodeBlueNow! organization share a passionate belief that we can design and deliver a new system of health care for all Americans — just as the Founding Fathers delivered a new system of government. She explains that having lived through social reforms such as integration and the expansion of women’s rights, she believes that large-scale social change is possible; it doesn’t have to be overwhelming to take on an existing system. You just have to be willing to work for it.

Citing a Rand study finding that more than 50 percent of health care delivered in America is either inappropriate or wrong, O’Connor invites all Americans to voice their opinions and start the process of discussion. “Start a conversation! Get educated, read some books — we can come up with a solution for this,” she urges. “The American people are ingenious. No one is going to fix the health care system for us. Let’s do it together.”

Roberta Greenwood is a frequent contributor to Seattle Woman.

©2008 Caliope Publishing Company