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Fabulous for Take Care - Free Enterprise MUST rule "healthcare"!

Posted by sean at October 17, 2006 12:00 PM

Tom:
This is a little off subject, but here goes:

In light of recent posts regarding leadership and accountability, what is your take on Steve Jobs and Mark Hurd? They were "on the watch" when various scandals hit, and claimed ignorance of the illegality of their actions.

You were pretty hard on Patricia Dunn, perhaps rightfully so. But should Jobs, who knew of backdating (and it doesn't take an accounting genius to figure out why backdating would be unethical--I'm not one and I knew it was bad from the moment I saw the first headline in the WSJ) be forgiven because of his (Apple's) stock performance?

McGuire was forced out despite outstanding stock performance. Tom, should we cast a black and white blanket over the whole issue and say an accountable leader ought to get out of there for scandals allowed to occur on his or her watch, or should we set a double-standard and forgive those who bless us with good stock performance, while condemning the dogs who would both act unethically AND rob investors of returns?

It is no secret why two silicon valley CEO's have avoided much bad press regarding their company's scandals while numerous others have had to step aside. As I learned in my particular niche of the Navy, it pays to be a winner.

And I think as winners, Hurd and Jobs should keep their jobs, but need a steeper penalty than having to say "Gee, I'm sorry, I didn't know it was wrong." As leaders, they should welcome every chance to make the situation right. I'd like to see Jobs give back (the money) until it hurts, even if it was his underlings who benefitted most from the grants he knew about but did nothing to stop.

I'm very interested in your opinion.

Thanks

Posted by Paul at October 17, 2006 2:20 PM

Paul - what was interesting is that the guy who was Chief Finance Officer at the time the backdated options were granted had retired from that position but remained a Director. He resigned when the issue surfaced, which was commendable and probably took the pressure off Steve Jobs.

I think Apple have a much deeper problem: Apple is perceived to = Steve Jobs.

Posted by MarkJF at October 17, 2006 3:46 PM

Back on topic....I recently moved and switched primary care physicians. I went online, found a local primary care physician that was asteriked as taking new patients and did the requisite call to Blue Cross to switch. Then I called his office only to find myself in the endless phone answering loop of a managed group practice. I tried the touchtone phone directory but the physician was not listed by first or last name. Dialing 0 after a few more voice prompts, I reached the operator, gave her all my information and requested an appointment to have a physical and was promptly informed that it would be March before he could do that (This is October and why does he say he's taking new patients?) Now after some quick thinking I asked the person if I could see him sooner to at least renew my prescriptions. No problem, but his actual assitant would have to do that and I was switched to his office and had to give all my information again. I now have an appointment in two weeks but was informed that I will have to call my old physician and have my records transferred myself and that I should arrive to my appointment early to fill in the requisite paperwork. Does this sound like a great customer experience or a trip through the bureaucratic wranglings of a supposed modern and computerized healthcare system. Obviously the pysicians time is sacred and my time has no value. Does anyone see an opportunity to control costs but give me a better experience? I can perform myriad financial and purchase transactions online but cannot do anything with my medical records stored in a manilla folder in a doctor's office.

On another similar note, I took my girlfriend to Montreal last spring to have laser eye surgery at a clinic founded by the guy that trained many of the doctors here in New England. New England price $5500, Montreal price with a two day hotel stay at the Marriot $2900. We were treated like royalty and the laser surgery a resounding success. What's wrong with this picture? We were not the only U.S. citizens in that office either.

Posted by Tom at Proteus at October 18, 2006 11:30 AM

Thank you very much for this heads up Tom - I will research Hal’s experiments. It is a long overdue concept. I am sure someone like Hal Rosenbluth will make a big difference in healthcare – I wish him well.

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Despite the warts and wrinkles of our state funded healthcare system (NHS) it is an exception to have even one awful scenario such as the one you imply is very frequent in the States. As you know the UK’s healthcare system is predominately public sector provided with the majority of the funds coming from general taxation. About 11.5% of the population also has private medical insurance, usually for reasons of faster access. The other way of looking at that is of course that 89.5% of the UK population relies totally on the state service. get viagra overnight

I would be fascinated to hear your thoughts about how we can address supply and demand issues in a mixed economy healthcare system like yours in then States compared to a predominantly state run service such as ours in the UK.

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