Teaser | “McAllen [Texas] …is one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country. Only Miami—which has much higher labor and living costs—spends more per person on health care. In 2006, Medicare spent fifteen thousand dollars per enrollee here, almost twice the national average. The income per capita is twelve thousand dollars. In other words, Medicare spends three thousand dollars more per person here than the average person earns.” What is going on here?

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Read about it | The New Yorker article, “The Cost Conundrum, What a Texas town can teach us about health care,” by Dr. Atul Gawande in the June 1 issue

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Reflect | Which of the people interviewed in the article is most like you? Where, if at all, do you see the dynamics described in this article at play?

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Weigh In | With five clicks, let us know what you think.  After you weigh in, see the results so far.

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Culture Shift invites consideration of deep cultural issues we need to face in order to build a sustainable and just U.S. health system. Read, reflect, weigh in, and converse with others. Through this process of public conscience work, you contribute to reshaping health care for the next generation.

What kind of world do we want to leave the children in our lives and communities? Help your faith community explore this by using the Prayer Tent for Children’s Health Care. The resource includes a six-sided prayer tent as well as six accompanying inserts in both English and Spanish. The tent is also available in Vietnamese.

You can use this over six weeks or as a focused reflection for a week. Created in 2006, faith communities continue to find this resource useful.

| Prayer Tent and Inserts (English): PDF |

| Prayer Tent and Inserts (Spanish): PDF |

| Prayer Tent (Vietnamese): PDF |

“We need to build institutions for which our children and grandchildren will thank us.”    – E. J. Dionne

Think about the children who are important to you:

What kind of U.S. health care system do you want to leave them? Write out your vision. Post it in a visible area-your work space, refrigerator, the bathroom mirror.

| Download a Vision Post Card: PDF |

Take another step:

Invite others to write and share their vision-around the dinner table, with people at work or your faith community, or with a friend at lunch.

Take two steps:

Create a vision wall by displaying vision cards in a common area. Invite others to add their vision. Host a quick party, invite folks to read the “vision wall,” enjoy refreshments, and engage in conversation.

If you do this with a group, distribute the cards with directions printed on the back. Sample text is included below. (We gave these out with a box of raisins. Hence the title: “Raisin’ consciousness for reform!”)

| Download Sample Directions for Back of Cards: Word |

Below are photos of a “What’s Your Vision?” initiative at St. Joseph Health System, which closed with a meeting where people looked at the visions and then mailed the cards to the White House Office of Health Reform.

Having identified your groups’ priorities for the future of U.S. health care, then what? This module offers guidance in translating those priorities into a shared vision for the future. Development of such a vision can be useful in helping assess healthcare proposals, the subject of Module 3.

| Download this resource: PDF |

Supporting Files:

| Download Individual Rating Grid: Word |

| Download Group Rating Grid: Word |

| Download Scoring Sheet: Excel |

| Download Score to Graph Tool: Excel |

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With a shared set of priorities expressed in a Vision statement, a community can then use this Vision to assess healthcare proposals, noting where policy moves toward the Vision and where it moves away from the Vision. Such analysis can help groups fine-tune their analysis and communicate more effectively with others, including lawmakers.

| Download this resource: PDF |

Supporting Files:

| Download Individual Assessment Worksheet: Word |

| Download Group Assessment Worksheets: Word |

The above files can be modified for use with vision documents other than the St. Joseph Health System Vision, which is used here as an example.

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What kind of health care system do we want to leave the next generation? This packet offers a step-by-step process for helping an organization, community or other collection of people to get clear on what is most important to them when it comes to health care. Two modules follow this one: #2 offers guidance in using the priority data to write a shared vision for the future of U.S. health care. #3 offers direction in using this vision to assess proposals.

| Download this Resource: PDF |

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U.S. Health Care as Chronic Social Sin

Author: Jack W. Glaser, STD

Jack Glaser posits that U.S. health care is an instance of chronic social sin–how child labor was in 1850–an inherited moral pathology, deeply anchored in societies and individuals, needing radical, systemic transformation, but so colossal that it intimidates rather than animates energy for reform.

| Download this resource: PDF |

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“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”

The Center sees the consensual development of a vision for U.S. health care–by groups, communities, the nation–as an essential step for reform. In seeking to practice what we teach, we spent two years working with leaders in our health system to develop a vision for the future of health care.

Here we share a color poster of our vision that you can print or view on your computer.

| Download Poster Size, 22″ x 28″ version: PDF |

| Download 8.5″ x 11″ version: PDF |

Covering a Nation

Author: Jack W. Glaser, STD

A moral frame is the crisp, pointed presentation of a complex issue that goes to the heart of the matter. In this article, working with this definition, I will argue that:

• “Covering the Uninsured” (CTU), or some variation of that slogan, is the dominant but unexamined moral frame for those of us who seek health care reform in the United States.
• Unfortunately, however, the CTU frame leads us down the wrong path and does significant disservice to the health care reform movement.
• I propose that we frame reform in terms of system, not symptom, along these lines: “Create the system we never built.”

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The 80/20 Law of Organizational Ethics

Author: Jack W. Glaser, STD

In this article I want to explore the interdependent relationship between the ethics of a society and the ethics of organizations that flourish within that society. Specifically, my focus is on how the ethics of U.S. health care shapes and limits the ethics of Catholic health care institutions. My conclusion: long-term, Catholic health ministry will be an empty shell, absent radical reform of U.S. health care.

| Download this resource: PDF |

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