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Relocalizing Health

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Relocalizing Health

The Future of Health Care is Local, Open and Independent

Health Rosetta Media,

15 min read
9 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

A guide to rescuing companies and communities from America’s voracious and ineffective health care system.

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Controversial
  • Analytical
  • Eye Opening

Recommendation

As in his previous work, The CEO’s Guide to Restoring the American Dream, nonprofit founder Dave Chase describes the most egregious aspects of a badly broken US health care system. Few believe they can stop the giant health care system from crushing firms, bankrupting workers and sucking the soul out of communities. Chase, however, offers solutions that have already improved health care and life in the communities and the firms that have implemented them. Referencing numerous case studies, he describes challenging but fruitful alternatives to what is perhaps the developed world’s worst health care system.

Summary

Out-of-control health care spending exacts an enormous and growing toll on Americans.

As of 2020, the health care system in the United States consumes a full fifth of the American economy. It has become a machine that does not improve health, but proves perfectly attuned to extracting money. Every year, more than any other factor, health care bankrupts Americans, even though 70% of them have insurance. It sucks so much money out of cities, towns and communities that public education, policing and social services have atrophied in many places across America. 

Almost by accident, a system of employer-provided health insurance resides at the heart of US health care problems today. This uniquely US model blinds workers to the real costs of health care, and creates a perverse incentive that discourages preventive and chronic care while rewarding far more expensive acute and reactive care.

For workers, health care costs have caused wages to decline or remain stagnant in real terms for decades. Spiraling health spending consume funds employers might use to improve worker benefits and salaries, and to help fund community initiatives – as many once...

About the Author

Dave Chase wrote The Opioid Crisis Wake-Up Call and The CEO’s Guide to Restoring the American Dream. He co-founded and helps lead the Health Rosetta, a nonprofit firm and public benefit corporation that focuses on transforming the US health care system.

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