Can Sick-care USA be fixed from inside?

The American "healthcare" system is really a sick-care system masquerading as a healthcare system. The rules reward doing things to take care of sick people, not rewarding health, disease prevention, and wellness goals.

Most agree that sick-care is sick and needs to be healed. Who will do it is another story.

Some healthcare executives think that the biggest opportunity is leadership and that, while there are big challenges, they are in control. Yet, of the 50 Most Innovative Companies, none are in the health services industry. Ironically, most of those companies have created solutions to problems applicable to the woes that beset sick-care.

I don't believe sick care can be fixed from inside for a few reasons.

1. History tells us that very few industries have solved the innovator's dilemma, yet alone one that touches every person in the US and accounts for almost 20% of the economy.

2. The culture of medicine is elitist, arrogant, exclusionary, and extremely resistant to change.

3. Sick-care is one of the most highly regulated industries and any efforts to make change are subject to political, economic and legal threats.

4. The rules that presently exist don't allow innovation external to healthcare to penetrate. Televideo conferencing used for telemedical care is an example.

5. Sick-care design, financing, and delivery is much too complicated for any one group to fix it alone.

6. There are multiple stakeholders, each feeding at the present $3 trillion trough. They are embedded deeply in the system to protect their interests.

7. Sick-care, like any industry, has blind spots. New entrants will come from places off sick care's radar.

8. Medical education is anti-entrepreneurial and, in some instances, seeks to find and destroy "disruption".

9. Few doctors have an entrepreneurial mindset.

10. Sick-care is myopic. Few have figured out how to bridge the now with the new.

Open innovation is anathema to sick-care. Yet, open networks and cross industry knowledge exchange are the key to innovation and industry progress. It's time for Sick Care USA to get their eyes checked. But, they shouldn't count on their vision insurance to pay for the visit since it is an uncovered benefit.