Sarah Chayes Responds

Budd, thanks so much!  I really appreciate the thoughtful read, and the time you took to write both.

Best regards,

Sarah

Sarah Chayes
Senior Associate, Democracy and Rule of Law Program & South Asia Program
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
1779 Massachusetts Ave, NW | Washington, DC 20036

Sarah Chayes

One Word, Two Ideologies

When I was a boy I imbibed my politics from my parents. I was the first born and my mother was only 23 when I was born, which was usual in those days, so I got the politics dose when they were still young, in their 20's and 30's. They had been lefties, not Party members I think, too independent for that, but close. So I learned from my mother directly – walking on 52^nd street to the shoe store and finding a little picket line, she told me “Never cross a picket line.” Sounds like my sister Kathy, actually, as I say it now to myself – these things get transmitted. Also walking on 52^nd street, I heard from her: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” (It's still hard to navigate the language here, isn't it? “His or her” is cumbersome, and “their” is ungrammatical. What to do? I think “their” will become grammatical. But I digress.) I also heard from my mother, “The land was desert under the Arabs; when the Jews came they made the desert bloom.” Ah, it seemed so easy.

As I got older it got more specific. I heard “Mossadegh” and “Arbenz” and the “Dulles brothers” and “McCarthy” and “United Fruit” and took it all to heart. Didn't hear anything about the CIA because it was too young to be notorious, I guess.

I think when my father said something, he had an air of thinking about it and weighing things, whereas my mother tended more to have shorter answers expressed as received wisdom as a guide to politics. I tended more toward my father's views, taking things only under advisement. My mother looked to him as the senior opinion, I think. She said of him, “He has this big brain.”

When we all got older and moved to Wynnewood on the Main Line in the 50's, when my parents got to their late 30's and 40's, their views moderated. I remember my father looking at the paper at dinner and saying, “That Texas Utilities stock just keeps going up!” His stake in society was changing. And one day an visiting English physician came to dinner and my Dad said, “What are your politics?” The guest said, “Well, I think both sides go a little too far,” or something like that. And my father preempted any further discussion by saying, “That's what I think, too.” I looked down at my plate, noting the change.

I explored more in college, noting the views of leftist friends, still holding my tending-Left positions in abeyance. I audited a course by Robert Paul Wolff, an avowed Marxist with a terrible facial tic, telling my friend Fred, “I really want to find out what my father was thinking.” I didn't take Kissinger's course on Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, which I now regret. I had to make hard choices on which courses to take, so I rationalized some of the choices, in this case thinking that there was something sinister about Kissinger. Instead, I took David Reisman's course on something about American society, liberal.

Now I'm a lot older, but I'm still trying to sort it all out, tell you the truth. I read and think. I like Kissinger's books; I like The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Sam Huntington. I note the ravages of aggressive American foreign policy and the ravages of the oil companies – worse that United Fruit – but at the same time I remember how wrong people were about the Soviet Union, and the real need to protect freedom, which is not just a myth.

“Freedom” is a very general word. I have thought for a long time now that to conservatives“freedom” means the free ability to ply the capitalist trade anywhere, as United Fruit and the oil companies did and do. To liberals “freedom” means democracy and human rights and good government; for some reason I think of Jimmy Carter as an exemplar. One word, two ideologies. Governmental agencies – CIA-State Department-DOD – waver between the two, but mostly incline toward capitalism as our national interest, probably.

Which brings us to this new book, a terrific and short one, by Sarah Chayes, the daughter of a renowned Harvard Law professor, my friend Michael reminds me – I thought that name seemed familiar. Her book is “Thieves of State.” It is short at 235 pages, which is a blessing, as it can then be concise and convincing without a lot of adumbrative claptrap. http://www.amazon.com/Thieves-State-Corruption-Threatens-Security/dp/0393239462/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1429548795&sr=1-1&keywords=thieves+of+state

Chayes' thesis is that failed states are not really failed states, they are countries captured and run by criminal associations. Their modus operandi is the shakedown at all levels. Therefore, the strategy of the United States – first to establish stability and only afterwards to root out corruption – does not and cannot work. Oppression is not a good strategy for the long term.

Chayes starts with Afghanistan, where she started out working for NPR and then left to work for an NGO headed by the older brother of one Hamid Karzai. She soon discovered that the Karzai's could easily have been directed by Francis Ford Coppola, the only problem being to decide who was Michael, who was Sonny, and who was Fredo. She literally watched the CIA hand over large bills to one of the brothers wrapped in aluminum foil. She did not witness the obtaining of a receipt.

The story in Afghanistan is not unexpected by anyone who has read even the basic books about the Bush Wars of Adventure that have left us in a generation-long hole to crawl out of. The incompetence of the US leadership is also not unexpected. The scale of both, however, is bowling-over unexpected. Just unnervingly corrupt, just unnervingly incompetent. It's enough to make one say, “Enough already! We're outa here,” no matter how convincing Kissinger (“World Order”) and Brent Stephens (“America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder”) may be on the need to remain involved because the world does need order. In the end I actually can't say we should be outa there, I think we need to help maintain order, but boy, we sure shouldn't do it this way.

Chayes' thesis to end corruption first is based on obtaining the good will of the people. They are the ones who are actually oppressed and extorted. Chayes cites four or five “mirror” would-be ruler advisers, the most familiar being Machiavelli, who have sought to bring reason to rulers through the ages. They all say the same thing, that you have to be basically fair to the people, responsible for them in rooting out the corruption of your subordinates, etc. If you don't act this way, they will revolt, and that the revolt will often be based on an extreme religious element, such as Martin Luther. Viewed this way, one comes to think of the Taliban and other Islamic movements as a typical reaction to official corruption.

So, if the ordinary citizens see the US in cahoots with their oppressors, how can order be established? All the wisdom is there for the reading, if anyone involved in these fiascos can read and reason, which is not a given. Instead, the military will opt for military means because it is hard to redirect them, for all the flexibility of intelligent leaders such as generals McKiernan and Petraeus, and Admiral Mike Mullen. (Chayes actually served on the staffs of McKiernan and Mullen.) The CIA will opt for cynical insolent secret deals with the cynical, sinister leaders and think themselves coldly realistic as they hand over the cash and don't tell the other parts of the US government what they are doing. The State Department will be its usual pusillanimous self. Eventually, getting outa there is often not voluntary.

Some little sidelights Chayes mentions made me think of another view of these terrible events and trends. Mubarek's son Gamal came back from his education in business in London and figured out how to corner more and more wealth in Egypt in new and modern ways. The gang in Russia was also clever in privatization. I think the top families in Angola and in Tunisia were also enlightened by Western business ideals. (Chayes points to the importance of families in kleptocratic enterprises, resisting somehow citing Sonny, Fredo, and Michael – I wouldn't have been able to restrain myself.) Is this why Boko Haram means “Western Education Is Forbidden?” B-schools teach no morality, just what works is good. The US sees no limits to inequality. There is only lip service to serving the general populace, making up the rationalization of trickle-down, saying that what you want to do is what ought to be done. Morality matters, and Western morality as conveyed by B-schools is a problem. It's capitalism as “freedom,” rather than civil rights and good government and free speech as “freedom.”

How does this happen? Hegel believed that ideals led to economic and political consequences. Marx famously turned Hegel on his head and asserted that economic relations to the means of production was the primary force in determining economic and political events. My stance (which the world is doubtless waiting for) is this: whatever. They're related, as the egg is to the chicken. When they form a self-reinforcing system, ideas and reality, the situation gets pretty ingrained. Where crime can happen, crime will happen.

So, here we are. It's nice to think of a Westphalian world where states respect each others' boundaries and internal politics, where legitimacy is respected inside and outside of the state. Unfortunately, with these kleptocratic states, that's not going to be possible. They will experience upheaval and threaten those around them and increasingly the rest of the globalized world. It's not a bad idea to try to help the states develop internal legitimacy and coherence. But to help them, the helpers need to understand both those states and the mirror-writers and history. There is little evidence that this is happening at anything like the scale we need.

It's a powerful argument in a short book. I think my father would have liked it, and my mother would have agreed. What will work is good government, and the ideology of freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear – all based on people and their needs and a legitimate government – not the freedom of rapaciousness the capitalists have brought us. Cynical realism is unrealistic.

Budd Shenkin

Hillary's Campaign

It's all so silly, really. At least I think so. It just seems pretty clear to me, especially since I have absolutely no inside information, no scientific information, no polls, nothing. But I do pay attention. We're talking about the campaign.

Number one: is it a problem for Hillary that she is essentially unopposed so far? It's an unfamiliar situation to the pols and pundits, so they say she needs opposition to sharpen her game. Well, no, I don't think so. If she's not sharp by this time after all her political life and campaigning, she's not going to be. One or two warmups and she should be sinking three-pointers if she ever could.

Second, though, think about this. What do you do when you are running in the primary? You have to calculate your angles so you get the nomination, please this faction and that faction who are the activist voters in the primary. Then you have to reset your positions for the general election, as Mitt Romney's campaign manager so usefully told us in 2012. Well, she won't have to do that particular pirouette. She can hone her positions from the start to please her “base” enough to excite, and to go to the general without having to disavow anything she said, and in so doing appear “political,” untrustworthy and unprincipled, which is a common suspicion with Hillary. She avoids pot holes.

Third: her problems are likability and her inability to fire up a crowd, to inspire, to come across well in public. Fine. Those are her problems. A professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at Cal told me in 2007 or so that she would never be President because she's a Methodist, and I think this set of problems is what he meant. She might down shots at a bowling alley in central Pennsylvania, but is she someone you would like to have a beer with? I dunno, maybe. I don't think Methodists drink much. But I think if she is to be likable, doing a primary race isn't going to help with that. There's a better opportunity to be likable when some of the pressure is off, when you are running a campaign without an opponent who you have to jab, when you can appear and make your case while the other side is in flux.

Clearly, likability isn't her strength. And as Dahlia Lithwick said, people are already tired of her and she hasn't done anything yet. So what should she do?

I think she needs to capitalize on what she is good at, and maybe it will spill over into her Methodist problem. She is smart. She doesn't seem to be very visionary, but she is smart and she is knowledgeable and she is wonky. She could be a competent President. THIS IS EXACTLY THE TIME TO DRIVE THIS HOME! And the absence of Democratic opposition gives her the opportunity.

She needs to go deep into issues, and show how good she is. Pick out about seven or eight issues, not just a couple. She can concentrate on just a couple later on. But right now she can go into things she cares about and knows, and she doesn't have to cater to the current whims of the populace and address what they are concerned about now. The idea isn't to line up votes by agreement with issues – I doubt that happens so much anyway – the point is to show how competent she is, how experienced, how much she knows. The opposition won't have a chance to do that, they will be too focused on out-maneuvering one another. So while they throw elbows at one another, she can be very presidential.

Oddly enough, I would wager that this tack would actually make her more likable. Maybe not beer-buddy likable, but likable for her seriousness, for her caring, for the respect she shows the American people in treating them as adults.  In the end you are who you are, and the more you cop to that, the better off you are.

Anyway, that's my idea. Better than anything Mark Penn ever came up with.

Budd Shenkin

Child Anxiety

As a pediatrician I have known that child anxiety is important to detect and talk about. I have seen a lot of anxious parents, and a lot of anxious children, and not very surprisingly, the two seem to travel together. I'm prone to anxiety myself, which is a pain, and I also seem to provoke it in myself. Somewhere I seem to think that if I'm not anxious, I'm not doing my job, or I won't do my job, or I won't get ahead.

Actually, I think I get it most from my father, although I could be wrong. I think I got it as I got older, but didn't have it at the start. As I think of myself in fourth grade, for instance, I can't remember being worried, or concerned, or anything, really. I remember mostly thinking that this is the best grade there is – we were the top grade in our assembly and I was the Student Council representative, but when we got to fifth grade we would be the youngest in the new assembly. So I was taking it for what it was – King of the Hill for the year. No anxiety there, none at all. That came later, mostly at college, I think.

But I digress. A pen pal of mine on the SOAPM listserve, Dick Schwartz, a veteran pediatrician from Virginia, posted this the other day. I liked it so much I'm passing it on here. With a thought. Isn't this important? If you took your kid to Dr. Schwartz, and he detected that your kid was anxious, and he pointed you to this way of dealing with it, wouldn't you be grateful? Don't you think this could change part of the course of childhood? Don't you?

And yet, do you realize that this detection, this conversation, this treatment, all of it, would go completely undetected by the Quality Police? The pediatric QP look for all sorts of things in a practice – immunization rates (important), lead testing rates (unimportant), chlamydia testing in teens (not very important) – lots of things that are (1) routine and (2) measurable. Surely, there is a need to measure quality, and if there is a need, there must be a way to do it. But is there a way? Well, there is and there isn't. You can detect some things, but some of the most important and life-changing things, are those you can't detect and you can't measure. So you have to rely on the professional diligence of your doctor.

Dick's patients are very lucky to have someone as diligent as he is. I was diligent, too. I like to think I made a difference for my patients beyond giving them shots, and maybe I did. I dunno. I hope I did.

But I digress once again. Let's just look at what is suggested for the anxious child. Makes a lot of sense to me.

Dealing with Child Anxiety? 9 Things You Can Try

by Renee Jain on March 24, 2015

As all the kids line up to go to school, your son, Timmy, turns to you and says, “I don’t want to take the bus. My stomach hurts. Please don’t make me go.” You cringe and think, Here we go again. What should be a simple morning routine explodes into a daunting challenge.

You look at Timmy and see genuine terror. You want to comfort him. You want to ease the excessive worry that’s become part and parcel of his everyday life. First, you try logic. “Timmy, we walk an extra four blocks to catch this bus because this driver has an accident-free driving record!” He doesn’t budge.

You provide reassurance. “I promise you’ll be OK. Timmy, look at me… you trust me, right?” Timmy nods. A few seconds later he whispers, “Please don’t make me go.”

You resort to anger: “Timothy Christopher, you will get on this bus RIGHT NOW, or there will be serious consequences. No iPad for one week!” He looks at you as if you’re making him walk the plank. He climbs onto the bus, defeated. You feel terrible.

If any of this sounds familiar, know you are not alone. Most parents would move mountains to ease their child’s pain. Parents of kids with anxiety would move planets and stars as well. It hurts to watch your child worry over situations that, frankly, don’t seem that scary. Here’s the thing: To your child’s mind, these situations are genuinely threatening. And even perceived threats can create a real nervous system response. We call this response anxiety and I know it well.

I’d spent the better part of my childhood covering up a persistent, overwhelming feeling of worry until, finally, in my early twenties, I decided to seek out a solution. What I’ve learned over the last two decades is that many people suffer from debilitating worry. In fact, 40 million American adults, as well as 1 in 8 children, suffer from anxiety. Many kids miss school, social activities and a good night’s rest just from the worried thoughts in their head. Many parents suffer from frustration and a feeling of helplessness when they witness their child in this state day in, day out.

What I also learned is that while there is no one-size-fits-all solution for anxiety, there are a plethora of great research-based techniques that can help manage it — many of which are simple to learn. WAIT! Why didn’t my parents know about this? Why didn’t I know about it? Why don’t they teach these skills in school?

I wish I could go back in time and teach the younger version of myself how to cope, but of course, that’s not possible. What is possible is to try to reach as many kids and parents as possible with these coping skills. What is possible is to teach kids how to go beyond just surviving to really finding meaning, purpose and happiness in their lives. To this end, I created an anxiety relief program for kids called GoZen. Here are 9 ideas straight from GoZen that parents of anxious children can try right away:

1. Stop Reassuring Your Child
Your child worries. You know there is nothing to worry about, so you say, “Trust me. There’s nothing to worry about.” Done and done, right? We all wish it were that simple. Why does your reassurance fall on deaf ears? It’s actually not the ears causing the issue. Your anxious child desperately wants to listen to you, but the brain won’t let it happen. During periods of anxiety, there is a rapid dump of chemicals and mental transitions executed in your body for survival. One by-product is that the prefrontal cortex — or more logical part of the brain — gets put on hold while the more automated emotional brain takes over. In other words, it is really hard for your child to think clearly, use logic or even remember how to complete basic tasks. What should you do instead of trying to rationalize the worry away? Try something I call the FEEL method:

• Freeze — pause and take some deep breaths with your child. Deep breathing can help reverse the nervous system response.
• Empathize — anxiety is scary. Your child wants to know that you get it.
• Evaluate — once your child is calm, it’s time to figure out possible solutions.
• Let Go – Let go of your guilt; you are an amazing parent giving your child the tools to manage their worry.

2. Highlight Why Worrying is Good
Remember, anxiety is tough enough without a child believing that Something is wrong with me. Many kids even develop anxiety about having anxiety. Teach your kids that worrying does, in fact, have a purpose.

When our ancestors were hunting and gathering food there was danger in the environment, and being worried helped them avoid attacks from the saber-toothed cat lurking in the bush. In modern times, we don’t have a need to run from predators, but we are left with an evolutionary imprint that protects us: worry.

Worry is a protection mechanism. Worry rings an alarm in our system and helps us survive danger. Teach your kids that worry is perfectly normal, it can help protect us, and everyone experiences it from time to time. Sometimes our system sets off false alarms, but this type of worry (anxiety) can be put in check with some simple techniques.

3. Bring Your Child’s Worry to Life
As you probably know, ignoring anxiety doesn’t help. But bringing worry to life and talking about it like a real person can. Create a worry character for your child. In GoZen we created Widdle the Worrier. Widdle personifies anxiety. Widdle lives in the old brain that is responsible for protecting us when we’re in danger. Of course, sometimes Widdle gets a little out of control and when that happens, we have to talk some sense into Widdle. You can use this same idea with a stuffed animal or even role-playing at home.

Personifying worry or creating a character has multiple benefits. It can help demystify this scary physical response children experience when they worry. It can reactivate the logical brain, and it’s a tool your children can use on their own at any time.

4. Teach Your Child to Be a Thought Detective
Remember, worry is the brain’s way of protecting us from danger. To make sure we’re really paying attention, the mind often exaggerates the object of the worry (e.g., mistaking a stick for a snake). You may have heard that teaching your children to think more positively could calm their worries. But the best remedy for distorted thinking is not positive thinking; it’s accurate thinking. Try a method we call the 3Cs:

• Catch your thoughts: Imagine every thought you have floats above your head in a bubble (like what you see in comic strips). Now, catch one of the worried thoughts like “No one at school likes me.”

• Collect evidence: Next, collect evidence to support or negate this thought. Teach your child not to make judgments about what to worry about based only on feelings. Feelings are not facts. (Supporting evidence: “I had a hard time finding someone to sit with at lunch yesterday.” Negating evidence: “Sherry and I do homework together–she’s a friend of mine.”)

• Challenge your thoughts: The best (and most entertaining) way to do this is to teach your children to have a debate within themselves.

5. Allow Them to Worry
As you know, telling your children not to worry won’t prevent them from doing so. If your children could simply shove their feelings away, they would. But allowing your children to worry openly, in limited doses, can be helpful. Create a daily ritual called “Worry Time” that lasts 10 to 15 minutes. During this ritual encourage your children to release all their worries in writing. You can make the activity fun by decorating a worry box. During worry time there are no rules on what constitutes a valid worry — anything goes. When the time is up, close the box and say good-bye to the worries for the day.

6. Help Them Go from What If to What Is
You may not know this, but humans are capable of time travel. In fact, mentally we spend a lot of time in the future. For someone experiencing anxiety, this type of mental time travel can exacerbate the worry. A typical time traveler asks what-if questions: “What if I can’t open my locker and I miss class?” “What if Suzy doesn’t talk to me today?”

Research shows that coming back to the present can help alleviate this tendency. One effective method of doing this is to practice mindfulness exercises. Mindfulness brings a child from what if to what is. To do this, help your child simply focus on their breath for a few minutes.

7. Avoid Avoiding Everything that Causes Anxiety
Do your children want to avoid social events, dogs, school, planes or basically any situation that causes anxiety? As a parent, do you help them do so? Of course! This is natural. The flight part of the flight-fight-freeze response urges your children to escape the threatening situation. Unfortunately, in the long run, avoidance makes anxiety worse.

So what’s the alternative? Try a method we call laddering. Kids who are able to manage their worry break it down into manageable chunks. Laddering uses this chunking concept and gradual exposure to reach a goal.

Let’s say your child is afraid of sitting on the swings in the park. Instead of avoiding this activity, create mini-goals to get closer to the bigger goal (e.g., go to the edge of the park, then walk into the park, go to the swings, and, finally, get on a swing). You can use each step until the exposure becomes too easy; that’s when you know it’s time to move to the next rung on the ladder.

8. Help Them Work Through a Checklist
What do trained pilots do when they face an emergency? They don’t wing it (no pun intended!); they refer to their emergency checklists. Even with years of training, every pilot works through a checklist because, when in danger, sometimes it’s hard to think clearly.

When kids face anxiety they feel the same way. Why not create a checklist so they have a step-by-step method to calm down? What do you want them to do when they first feel anxiety coming on? If breathing helps them, then the first step is to pause and breathe. Next, they can evaluate the situation. In the end, you can create a hard copy checklist for your child to refer to when they feel anxious.

9. Practice Self-Compassion
Watching your child suffer from anxiety can be painful, frustrating, and confusing. There is not one parent that hasn’t wondered at one time or another if they are the cause of their child’s anxiety. Here’s the thing, research shows that anxiety is often the result of multiple factors (i.e., genes, brain physiology, temperament, environmental factors, past traumatic events, etc.). Please keep in mind, you did not cause your child’s anxiety, but you can help them overcome it.

Toward the goal of a healthier life for the whole family, practice self-compassion. Remember, you’re not alone, and you’re not to blame. It’s time to let go of debilitating self-criticism and forgive yourself. Love yourself. You are your child’s champion.

Simple tools can help alleviate your child’s anxiety. Start teaching your child coping skills with animated lessons here.

This was originally posted on PsychCentral as 9 Things Every Parent with an Anxious Child Should Try

 

Isn't this important? And where will you get help except from your primary care pediatrician? Yup, primary care. The same pursuit that some health policy people are trying to run out of business with High Deductible Health Plans. But I digress. Time for me to get back to preparing my upcoming presentation to the Goldman School of Public Policy Board of Advisors on High Deductible Health Plans. That's making me anxious.

budd shenkin

The Health Care World is Looking for a Hero

Everyone is familiar with the basic problems of health care in the United States. It costs a lot, it is inefficient, and quality is highly variable. With these problems, virtually everyone in the field, liberals and conservatives, agree on the so-called “Triple Aim” of health care reform: decrease the rate of change of the cost increase (bend the cost curve) if not actually decrease the cost; improve the consistent quality of care; and improve the health status of the population at large. In theory, this should be doable with better organization.

There are a few programs in place trying to achieve cost reduction, hopefully while also achieving the other two objectives. Accountable Care Organizations are one such program. Another is an attempt to change the fee for service mode of payment and replacing it with so-called Value Based Insurance Plans, which would generally pay a set amount for various conditions, and so put the onus on practitioner organizations to make their services cost-effective. But the most advanced and widespread program of cost reduction is health insurance called High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP). I have explained my opposition to HDHPs before on this blog with some passion. I was also lead author of the American Academy of Pediatrics policy paper criticizing HDHPs – http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/133/5/e1461.full.pdf+html. These plans accounted for over 20% of employer-sponsored health insurance policies in 2013, and that percentage has doubtless markedly increased under the ACA (Obamacare).

The key result of HDHPs is to decrease the volume of health services at the lower level of care – primary care especially, but lots of other basic services as well. In other words, its effect is to cut utilization and thereby to cut costs. The most prominent pro-HDHP article I'm aware of appeared a couple of years ago in the journal Health Affairs; written by Amelia Haviland et al., its title was “Growth Of Consumer-Directed Health Plans To One-Half Of All Employer-Sponsored Insurance Could Save $57 Billion Annually.” Pretty assertive. Now a followup article has appeared: “Do consumer-directed' Health Plans Bend the Cost Curve Over Time? “ The conclusion is yes, they do. Amazing. If you raise the price of a service people consume less of it. Bring on the Nobel Prize. And try to ignore the other two elements of the Triple Aim, quality and health of the community, because with HDHPs quality and equity have to decline.

But health care costs do need to decrease, and the HDHP advocates are doing the research necessary to show that, whatever the defects of HDHPs (and I think they are severe), at least costs are reduced, or so it seems at present.

The is this: yes, HDHPs are poor policy, but where is a better substitute? We don't have compelling alternatives, for many reasons. So, to try to fix the problems responsibly, we have to take preliminary steps to help these alternatives to appear.

So, here is my suggestion for the research someone should undertake. It would be easy research, it would be significant research, and it would be great for someone's career. Here's my suggestion:

We have good evidence that a major problem with the US health care system is not over-utilization, but over-pricing.  See tinyurl.com/pz7oumm.  Here is an example: in 2012, the average hospital day in the US cost over $4,287.  The next highest hospital day cost in international perspective -- not the average international hospital day cost, but the next highest -- was Australia, where the cost per day was $1,472.  That's not a small difference.

This shows just one item of comparison, the cost of a hospital day. This same report shows many, many items wit the same order of difference. The average price for an angiogram in the US was $2,430.  In Chile, the next highest country, it was $378. Given these differences, how can one think anything else besides, what would happen to US health costs if the prices of medical goods and services were in line with the rest of the world?

So, that's the research project. Do the same thing the first Haviland article did. Take about 20 of the common and overpriced services. Compare the cost of all these services together and see how much they cost now, and how much they would cost if they had international prices. Here's the matrix:

-->

		annual frequency	average US price	x times y = total cost
CURRENTLY
	Service 1	x	$y	$z
	Service 2	x’	$y’	$z’
	…
	Service 20	x’’	$y’’	$z’’
	TOTAL			TOTAL COST 1
			average intl. Price	x times i = total revised cost
REVISED	Service 1	x	$i	$m
	Service 2	x'	$i’	$m’
	…
	Service 20	x’'	$i’’	$m’’
	TOTAL			TOTAL COST 2
	AMOUNT SAVED = TOTAL COST 1 - TOTAL COST 2

Then publish the paper in the mode of the first Haviland article: “Curtailing the Price of 20 Common Medical Services to International Norms Would Save $100 Billion in the US.”

Say the Amount Saved turned out to be really significant, as I think it would be. Then, although we wouldn't have a program that would be competitive with HDHPs, we would have a target. Find a program that would reduce the prices of key overpriced services, and there it would be, a program that decreased costs without interfering with quality of care. Yes, it would be hard to find that program, but at least the target would be clear and present.

That's my proposal. The medical cost world is looking for a hero. Somewhere out there, that hero is waiting. Hey, read my blog!

Budd Shenkin