knowing what healthcare is really costing you

Great op-ed piece in today's WaPo ("5 Myths About Our Ailing Health-Care System," by Shannon Brownlee and Ezekiel Emanuel). WSJ's Health Blog also does a good commentary on it.

What speaks to me is Myth #2 (somebody else is paying for your insurance). Brownlee and Emanuel make an eminently sensible point:

Even when your employer offers coverage, he isn't reaching into his own pocket to cover you and your fellow employees; he's reaching into your pocket, paying you lower wages than he would if he didn't have to pay for your health insurance.

And of course, your taxes are what fund the likes of Medicare, Medicaid, VA healthcare, and other public programs.

All told, the average family of four is coughing up $29,000 a year for health care through taxes, lower wages and out-of-pocket medical expenses.

So, maybe we should be paying more attention to increasing the salience of healthcare costs. This is something Congressional Budget Office Director Peter Orszag has argued in favor of (see the section starting at page 6 of this document), and given his likely next assignment, we'll probably be hearing more along these lines in 2009 and beyond.

good reads from recent issue of Fortune

The gym where I exercise has a magazine rack. For me, that's an essential piece of equipment-- right up there with the elliptical, stair stepper, weight machines, free weights, etc. I have to have something to read while I'm cranking out the MET's on my aerobic equipment du jour; otherwise I get frightfully bored.

Today I happened to be reading the latest (11/24/08) issue of Fortune. Great series of articles by Jennifer Reingold in the "Leadership" section:

Meet Your New Leader: How the fallout from the financial crisis could breed a new type of corporate leader-- the "Lifeguard Leader," who's more skilled at negotiating with different constituencies (especially government) and more willing to ask questions and acknowledge what he/she doesn't know than the "Lone Ranger Leader" celebrated in the business and popular press over the last few decades.

10 New Gurus You Should Know: The "next generation" of management experts. Here are the ones that intrigued me: Patrick Lencioni (his focus is on "organizational health" and he's now turning his attention to working with "overwhelmed families"); Rakesh Khurana (his big idea is "charismatic CEO's don't work," and he believes management needs to become a profession-- with licensing requirements, a code of ethics, and a "stated commitment to improving the well-being of stakeholders and society"); Don Sull (his big ideas are that businesses should forget about developing a grand vision and should instead embrace uncertainty); and Joel Podolny (when he was at Yale School of Management, he developed courses on customers and invention that looked at problems holistically, and now he's heading up Apple's in-house "university").

Secrets of Their Success: Interview with Malcolm Gladwell about his latest book. What grabbed my attention: The 10,000-hours rule and the relationship between wet-rice farming and academic success. (Read the whole thing.)

"aging slackers"

Workforce Management magazine recently ran an article about how the recent market crash-- coming on top of the elimination of many defined-benefit pension plans and the inability of many middle-aged workers to save enough money on their own to be able to fund a comfortable retirements-- may mean larger numbers of workers staying in the workforce "well past the traditional retirement age of 65."

At the very least, that could cause bottlenecks in companies’ plans to move people up the corporate ladders. But it might also mean something else: Firms could find themselves with a population of aging slackers—older workers who are doing just the bare minimum to get a paycheck without getting fired, warns Teresa Ghilarducci, the Bernard L. and Irene Schwartz chair in economic policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York.

Even worse, disgruntled older workers could resort to litigation or work sabotage over their lack of retirement savings, experts say.

"At the very least, employers may be facing employee disaffection," Ghilarducci says. "Employee revenge often comes in the form of work slowdown. It’s not so hard to do just enough to get by without getting fired."

C'mon, now. Is that a realistic picture? What about all the 50+ people who are redefining retirement and pursuing encore careers?

It's interesting to note that Prof. Ghilarducci recently testified at a House Education and Labor Commitee hearing on behalf of a proposal to eliminate the 401(k) "tax subsidy" and to implement a system of government-administered "guaranteed retirement accounts." Sounds like she's exploring a novel way of selling business on the advantages of "guaranteed retirement."