NO105 Lecture 9: Healthcare week 9

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fuchsiaferret503

9 Feb 2018

School

WLU

Department

North American Studies

Course

NO105

Professor

Bina Mehta

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Document Summary

Fuchs tells us that the us healthcare system is very different. It spends more, but the share of expenses paid by government is much lower. The oecd countries are compared to the us and fuchs claims that there is greater income inequality in the us. This is rooted in american history, values and politics. Usa: healthcare provided by private insurance companies issue. This contributes to misperceptions about canadian healthcare and, as a consequence, about canada more generally. This is because it"s embedded in their history"s revolution make mistakes and don"t always provide full, complete, accurate coverage of an.

Related Questions

CASE STUDY 7 **** WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM THE CASE STUDY? ( ****basically just summarize what the case study is about)

Transforming the Clinical Process at Farmington Endoscopy Center William C. Kinney

Transforming the clinical work process in healthcare is not going to be a simple task, as many of todayâs work solutions are rooted in decades-long and even century-old autonomous and hierarchical structures. As mentioned in the chapter, Paul Starrâs The Social Transformation of American Medicine explained how US healthcare evolved into a system that separates the business side and clinical side of care delivery. Separating the two functions ultimately created two diverging approaches, leaving the patient caught in the middle. Regulations from both the insurance industry and federal government are trying to bring the two sides together in the interest of what is best for the healthcare system as a whole.

The IOMâs reports on medical quality highlighted the inefficiencies and mistakes that resulted from the increased complexity of healthcare. Although IT exists to change the system, it has lacked the leadership and skills needed to bring about a redesign that, in turn, could transform existing processes and structures. The IOM reports and subsequent analyses have highlighted IT as a tool to improve quality and efficiency. Clinical decision support system (CDSS), in particular, has been identified as a priority health IT, as it pushes evidence-based health recommendations that lead not only to better clinical processes, quality, and outcomes but also to lower healthcare costs. The challenge in adopting CDSS is determining where and how to apply the evidence.

This case highlights the use of health IT to transform the clinical and business processes. Readers should take note of who the relevant players are, the information needs in care delivery, and the method of leveraging information to make care delivery more efficient and effective.

Farmington Endoscopy Center

Farmington is a Midwest college town with a population of more than 100,000 and a large and productive medical community supported by a local medical school. The medical community serves not only the residents of Farmington but also the residents of the surrounding rural communities, some of whom drive more than two hours to get to their respective clinic or hospital. The limited number of primary care physicians who work in rural settings, lack of supporting facilities, and varying socioeconomic backgrounds all add to the complexities of rural medicine. Rural communities also have few manufacturers and corporations that hire employees and provide employer-sponsored, private health insurance. This leaves many rural patients no choice but to enroll in government- supported healthcare programs. Farmington Endoscopy Center (FEC) is a freestanding, physician- owned endoscopy facility that serves both adult and pediatric patients. The main proceduresâesophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) and colonoscopyâare performed by six gastroenterologist (the owners). Last year, it completed almost 5,000 cases, and this year it is anticipating a 5 percent growth in volume by adding a new physician. FEC is owned and managed by the physicians, but a full-time administrator is in charge of day-to-day operations, compliance with state and federal safety/account- ability standards, billing and collections, and staffing. Rounding out the staff are eight nurses, four receptionists, one billing specialist, and one certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA).

Patients are referred to FEC for an endoscopy procedure by the six physicians, each of whom runs a separate outpatient clinic, or by independent primary care or specialty physicians. The independent primary or specialty care physician assumes patient-management responsibilities for the results of the endoscopy, so the gastroenterologist who performs the procedure is essentially a technician whose responsibility to the patient ends at the completion of the procedure. Both EGD and colonoscopy are not painful, but they are uncomfortable and thus require sedation. Administered by the CRNA, sedation techniques range from applying topical anesthetic to running an intravenous line of light anesthesia (where the patient stays awake and can communicate) or a heavy dose of anesthesia (where the patient is unconscious and could stop breathing and may need respiratory support). The CRNA is licensed by the state but cannot act as an independent provider and must be under the close supervision of the gastroenterologist. Throughout the procedure, the gastroenterologist is ultimately responsible for the patientâs well being.

Areas of Improvement

Susan Michaels, the FEC administrator, is reviewing last yearâs reports to find ways to increase volume. Both private and public insurance have changed their rules, resulting in lower reimbursements. Meanwhile, healthcare costs continue to rise, further cutting into profits. Needless to say, the FEC physician owners are concerned. Susan identifies two problem areas in the reports:

1. The center has a day-of-procedure cancellation rate of 8 to 12 per- cent. These patients show up for their scheduled procedure only to be cancelled by the clinic because of some factors that were not known before their arrival. The top-five factors are blood-thinner usage, unidentified cardiovascular risk, failure to adhere to NPO (latin for ânil per os,â which means no food or drink hours before a procedure), improper guardianship, and lack of bowel prep.

2. Regulations have doubled the amount of required paperwork to be completed for each patient. Explanation of patient rights and privacy policies, medication-reconciliation process, deep venous thrombosis evaluation, and complication reporting are just some of the tasks or forms that must be completed before a case can be closed. The planned addition of another physician to the practice would increase the number of cases, exacerbating the paperwork problem. Susan is considering hiring another nurse to help the existing staff with the workload, a move that would enable the FEC to accommodate more patients and complete the paperwork quicker. Fortunately, Susan just returned

Fortunately, Susan just returned from a health IT workshop that presented a new logic and tools for how to define the dimensions of a problem and derive workable solutions.

Information Needs

Evaluating and managing patient health needs is about acquiring information and making a decision based on that information. A wise physician once stated that 90 percent of the information a physician consults to arrive at a diagnosis is contained in the patientâs medical history. Much of todayâs health IT efforts pay attention to the physicianâs information needs for two reasons: (1) The doctor is ultimately responsible for health- care evaluation and management, and (2) the doctor gets paid based on a certain level of information she gathers. A careful review of current EMRs shows that information is maintained in vertical silos or âbucketsâ and based on billing and collection needs. Information is compartmentalized and cannot be shared easily among all players in the care delivery process. Compartmentalization also hinders the use of the information and masks the time-sensitive value of that information. Time, in this case, is chronologic and pertains to information that must be gathered and acted upon before an event.

In the case of scheduled procedures, decisions need to be made days before the encounter. Anticoagulation therapy, for example, is information that must be relayed before a patientâs appointed surgery or intervention. Appropriately managing anticoagulation is not necessarily straightforward, and a new healthcare player (e.g., a cardiologist) may need more information or guidance. CDSS can ensure that relevant patient information, research evidence, and best practice are available at the right time, a system that is infinitely valuable to a freestanding endoscopy center or ambulatory surgery center.

Information Gathering Process for an Integrated IT

Susan decides to use IT to address FECâs two problems. She identifies the information needs of each player (i.e., physicians, CRNA, and nurses), and then she breaks down the problems into components to better under- stand the clinical processes and find ways to integrate them to improve efficiencies and patient satisfaction. The ultimate goal is to create a sophisticated data-capture and management IT with an integrated CDSS. The steps she takes are as follows:

1. List each team member involved in an endoscopy procedure. Does the team composition change according to who initiated the patient referral? What steps do the physicians follow to refer patients to FEC? The referring physiciansâ information needs must be considered so that a better request-for-procedure ordering process can be developed.

2. List the information needs of each team member, including the supporting players who perform billing, collections, and other administrative tasks. Here are a few examples of these needs:

- The gastroenterologist needs to know why the patient is there. Is this a screening colonoscopy because of a family history of colon cancer? Is this a patient with anemia and guaiac-positive stools?

- The nurse needs to know if the patient had surgery in the last 30 days, as this increases the patientâs risk of deep venous thrombosis. The nurse also needs a current list of medications to complete the medication-reconciliation process.

The CRNA needs to know if the patient is taking an angiotensin- converting enzyme inhibitor. Current recommendations are for patients to not take this medication on the morning of a procedure. The CRNA must know the patientâs cardiac history and be able to identify potential risk factors that would affect the patientâs choice of sedation.

The referring physician needs a system for telling the FEC gastroenterologist, nurses, and CRNA information on the patient, including tests, medications, and risk factors, that could affect the patientâs ability to receive the procedure on the day it is scheduled.

Scheduling needs to know which patients are scheduled for what procedure and how long the procedure is estimated to take. Scheduling staff is responsible for reminding the patient of the appointment time, date, and any preparation (such as the NPO).

Registration needs to know the patientâs demographic and social status. Is the patient a minor? Who will be present to sign the consent? If the child is in foster care, does FEC need to obtain a court order to do the procedure? If the patient is an adult, is he of sound mind and body, or does he have a legal guardian?

Procedure room nurses need to know the capability of supplies and equipment to meet the needs of the patient. Is the patient wheelchair bound, and if so, should more time be added to the schedule? Does the patient have an artificial joint, as this will affect where the electrocautery-grounding pad is placed?

Construct a timeline of the information needs across the encounter. Identify overlapping information needs between players.

As a final step, Susan determines the time component of each information need to ensure that it is available at the appropriate time, which could reduce cancellations. Susan considers available consumer technology, such as the Internet, smart phones, and apps, to enhance the IT option. Susan also looks into outsourcing.

A successful health IT solution for FEC results in a significant reduction in cancellation rates and in a faster or same-day completion of the administrative, regulatory, and nursing paperwork. Such improvements enable FEC to schedule more patients and complete more procedures.

lemongnat674


(Please Summerize the work down below, thank you)

Political	Economic
Growing political influences on healthcare advances	Cost of living increases
Global government influence on healthcare cost	Cost of insurance prices
Government control of Medicaid, Medicare funding	Rise of forecasted interest rates
Social/Cultural	Technical or Technology
Increase average age of population	Demand on new medical treatments
Patient expectations increase	Customize treatments
Demographics are in constant change	More advance service facilities
Environmental	Legal
Growing need for green business	Constant change of government drug Regulations
Environmental agenda and community awareness	Consumer laws
	Health and safety regulations



Porters 5 forces of business model

Competitive Rivalry
Growth opportunity for healthcare companies are expected to growing the next few years
Increase in new revolutionary drugs both in and outside of the US

Threat if New Entrants
Strict government regulations
Difficult to keep up due to constant change
Huge startup cost

Substitute Products
Threat of other substituting product and service at lower cost



Bargaining Power of Customers
Generic drugs offered at large discount to consumer
Larger less customized healthcare facility with lower housing costs
Several facilities offering similar services.

Bargaining power of supplier
Medical suppliers have a large pricing power
Bargaining power of physicians and nurses is huge because of large hospital benefits

Swot Analysis

Strengths

Highly trained and capable employees

Market experience

Strong leadership

High level of organizational efficiency

Excellent facilities

Strong commitment to bettering the community

Weaknesses

Increased cost of healthcare could lower our clientele

Limited staff resources

Limited cash flow to hire and train new employees

Lack of resources

Opportunities

Fast growing technology opens new doors for using state of the art equipment to better serve the patients.

Nursing and residential care is one of the fastest growing industries

Aging population

Threats

Uncertainty in political and economic climate causes hesitation for receiving new patients.

Funding constraints

Highly competitive market

Product or Service Analysis

Our services will be used by patients who cannot afford experimental treatments and patients who have been abandoned by the system because hospitals can no longer provide medical assistance. At our facility, we will be able to work with the families and provide them with different payments options, such as low monthly payment plans. Our main goal is to be able to treat the patient at a very affordable cost; however, if any patient does not possess the means to pay for treatment, he or she would not be turned away; our facility will tap into government and private funding to cover treatment cost.

The beauty of this service is that there isnât a charge of any kind to take part in our program because it is completely funded by government grants. Individuals that would take part would more than likely not have the means to pay a monthly deductible. Due to the nature of the business listed as a non-profit agency, there is no way to make a profit of any kind, as it would jeopardize the business in its entirety.

Some of the market factors that create a demand for our services include the need of medical care after having maximized all resources, the number of low income families, and the number of patients facing health issues needed extended medical care.

Opportunities that may derive from this business is the opportunity to expand and open multiple facilities, while extending a helping hand to many more in need. The risk, however, is the unstable funds deriving from grants. This can pose a huge treat to the business, as grants often times come and go and cannot be counted on as a constant income.

After studying the healthcare system and current policies in place, data shows many individuals facing severe health issues usually go untreated and uncared for due to the outrageous cost of medical care. It is devastating to see how often people, especially the elderly, are sent home and forgotten for the mere reason that hospitals and doctors are not willing to care for patients without financial means. In fact, in 2009 Harvard news reported 45,000 annual deaths due to lack of health coverage in the U.S. alone, which is significantly higher than the 18,000 reported by USA Today in 2002.

Financial Analysis

Clermont will be a nonprofit organization, dedicated to help the most needed. To open the facility fully operational we must take in consideration some fixed expenses like the land acquisition, permits, interest, brokers, administration fees, professionals (facility setup), staff, reports (environmental, occupational, fire, FDA), electricity, water, phone, water & sewer , connections, taxes, insurance, management, security, advertising, accountants, food, lawn mowers, bank fees, etc.

The facility will need have a total value of approximately three million dollars, but if we break the price of the land acquisition in to a thirty (30) year mortgage we can star up the business with an investment of approximately $ 233,944.61 USD to cover the first month of operation including all the startup permits and connections. After the first month the fixed expenses will be $184,444.00 USD with the exception of the months were taxes are due; taxes are around $ 43,000.00 USD paid quarterly will increase the tax month (depending on the facility fiscal year) for $ 10,750.00 USD approximately. We will fund all the costs with private and public funding, fundraiser, events, raffles, and most important with the help of the community.

As we mentioned before, Clermont is a nonprofit organization and we will do everything in our power to give the relief to the families in need. No one will be rejected because they do not have the money or the insurance cannot help. No money will be required from patient and every single dollar received will be spent in the patients, and in improving our facility and our service every day.

We believe our financial even breaking point will be a year after we begin operations, and be profitable soon after. There are many patients in need, and with the government and public grants each person will receive the treatment they need, and we will become the hope of many.

Can you summarize this article and wrtite down some important points regarding GDP?

NEW YORK â Striving to revive the world economy while simultaneously responding to the global climate crisis has raised a knotty question: are statistics giving us the right âsignalsâ about what to do? In our performance-oriented world, measurement issues have taken on increased importance: what we measure affects what we do. If we have poor measures, what we strive to do (say, increase GDP) may actually contribute to a worsening of living standards. We may also be confronted with false choices, seeing trade-offs between output and environmental protection that donât exist. By contrast, a better measure of economic performance might show that steps taken to improve the environment are good for the economy. Eighteen months ago, French President Nicolas Sarkozy established an international Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, owing to his dissatisfaction â and that of many others â with the current state of statistical information about the economy and society. On September 14, the Commission will issue its long-awaited report. The big question concerns whether GDP provides a good measure of living standards. In many cases, GDP statistics seem to suggest that the economy is doing far better than most citizensâ own perceptions. Moreover, the focus on GDP creates conflicts: political leaders are told to maximize it, but citizens also demand that attention be paid to enhancing security, reducing air, water, and noise pollution, and so forth â all of which might lower GDP growth. The fact that GDP may be a poor measure of well-being, or even of market activity, has, of course, long been recognized. But changes in society and the economy may have heightened the problems, at the same time that advances in economics and statistical techniques may have provided opportunities to improve our metrics. For example, while GDP is supposed to measure the value of output of goods and services, in one key sector â government â we typically have no way of doing it, so we often measure the output simply by the inputs. If government spends more â even if inefficiently â output goes up. In the last 60 years, the share of government output in GDP has increased from 21.4% to 38.6% in the US, from 27.6% to 52.7% in France, from 34.2% to 47.6% in the United Kingdom, and from 30.4% to 44.0% in Germany. So what was a relatively minor problem has now become a major one. Likewise, quality improvements â say, better cars rather than just more cars â account for much of the increase in GDP nowadays. But assessing quality improvements is difficult. Health care exemplifies this problem: much of medicine is publicly provided, and much of the advances are in quality. The same problems in making comparisons over time apply to comparisons across countries. The United States spends more on health care than any other country (both per capita and as a percentage of income), but gets poorer outcomes. Part of the difference between GDP per capita in the US and some European countries may thus be a result of the way we measure things. Another marked change in most societies is an increase in inequality. This means that there is increasing disparity between average (mean) income and the median income (that of the âtypicalâ person, whose income lies in the middle of the distribution of all incomes). If a few bankers get much richer, average income can go up, even as most individualsâ incomes are declining. So GDP per capita statistics may not reflect what is happening to most citizens. We use market prices to value goods and services. But now, even those with the most faith in markets question reliance on market prices, as they argue against mark-to-market valuations. The pre-crisis profits of banks â onethird of all corporate profits â appear to have been a mirage. This realization casts a new light not only on our measures of performance, but also on the inferences we make. Before the crisis, when US growth (using standard GDP measures) seemed so much stronger than that of Europe, many Europeans argued that Europe should adopt US-style capitalism. Of course, anyone who wanted to could have seen American householdsâ growing indebtedness, which would have gone a long way toward correcting the false impression of success given by the GDP statistic. Recent methodological advances have enabled us to assess better what contributes to citizensâ sense of well-being, and to gather the data needed to make such assessments on a regular basis. These studies, for instance, verify and quantify what should be obvious: the loss of a job has a greater impact than can be accounted for just by the loss of income. They also demonstrate the importance of social connectedness. Any good measure of how well we are doing must also take account of sustainability. Just as a firm needs to measure the depreciation of its capital, so, too, our national accounts need to reflect the depletion of natural resources and the degradation of our environment. Statistical frameworks are intended to summarize what is going on in our complex society in a few easily interpretable numbers. It should have been obvious that one couldnât reduce everything to a single number, GDP. The report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress will, one hopes, lead to a better understanding of the uses, and abuses, of that statistic. GDP Fetishism - Project Syndicate 2/8/10 4:05 PM http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stiglitz116/English Page 2 of 3 The report should also provide guidance for creating a broader set of indicators that more accurately capture both well-being and sustainability; and it should provide impetus for improving the ability of GDP and related statistics to assess the performance of the economy and society. Such reforms will help us direct our efforts (and resources) in ways that lead to improvement in both. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009. www.project-syndicate.org Reprinting material from this website without written consent from Project Syndicate is a violation of international copyright law. To secure permission, please contact [email protected]. tvselvakumaran 05:30 30 Sep 09 The official consensus Professor Martin Feldstein's latest article, "The G-20's Empty Promises" on Project Syndicate needs careful consideration. In his article, Professor Feldstein essentially adopts the "official consensus" of the economics profession on the current economic crisis. This official consensus, in its various mainfestations, has also been elaborated on by other famous economists, notably Professor Robert Lucas in his article in the Economist in early August, and by Professor Paul Krugman in his recent article in the New York Times Magazine. One characterizing feature of this official consensus is a confidence (a.k.a. triumphalism) in the certainty of outcomes predicted by modern economic theory. The main precepts of this official consensus are (i) Professor Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, has at his disposal all the theoretical tools of economics that are necessary and sufficient to deal with the current economic crisis. As Professor Lucas explains it in his Economist article, if one were able to predict in advance exactly when a market crash would occur, it would imply that the market entertains arbritrage opportunities. Hence, it is not possible to predict financial crises in advance. However, except for the precise timing of the occurrence of financial crises, macroeconomic theory could explain the workings of the economy completely. In particular, to avert the recurrence of the Great Depression, certain actions were needed to be taken by the Fed -- the specifics of these actions were all clearly understood by the economics profession. However, it was politically untenable to take these actions before there was a financial crisis. Once the financial crisis occurred though, Professor Bernanke could intervene in the markets and take the necessary actions (in the Fall of 2008). These actions include the injection of several trillion dollars into the economy and making the availability of credit the cheapest possible. The actions taken by the Fed have now resulted in the economy avoiding a recurrence of the Great Depression. This is, in brief, what Professor Lucas has stated in his Economist article. (ii) Thus in Professor Lucas' interpretation of things, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, for example, was necessary, in order to justify the intervention of the Federal Reserve in the functioning of the markets. The collapse of Lehman Brothers was, although regrettable, an unavoidable event. But, on the whole, monetary policy, even if it is a profligate one, would be necessary and sufficient to prevent the recurrence of the Great Depression, in Professor Lucas' view. Furthermore, the old wisdom of the Chicago School that government should be kept minimal at all times continues to hold, even in light of the current economic crisis. The Keynesians led by Professor Krugman, on the other hand, believe that Lehman Brothers should never have been allowed to fail. In their view, when the Fed's fund rate is at zero, monetary policy is largely ineffective for sustaining and stimulating economic activity. This is because of liquidity traps caused by businessmen who don't see economic opportunities that would induce them to borrow the cheap money available from the banks. Hence the government should step in to provide massive fiscal assistance to the economy by taking on spending directly, even if it means assuming trillions of dollars of public debt. (iii) Professor Krugman scored a lot of points by pointing out that the current state of economic theory, highly influenced as it is by the efficient market hypothesis of the Chicago School, indicated that a crisis of such magnitude as the current economic crisis could not happen at all. This fundamental failure to recognize that an enormous crisis could indeed happen, calls for the overthrow of the policy that markets provide the best social gain when they are completely free from government interference. From first impressions, it might seem that the views of the monetarists and Keynesians are vastly different. However, it is important to note that in the view of the Keynesians too, once large scale government spending as prescribed by the Keynesians is instituted, there is again enough assurance that modern economic theory (although with a heavy Keynesian tilt) would be sufficient to deal with the current economic crisis. (iv) In this regard, perhaps it is relevant to refer here to Professor Robert Shiller's latest article, "Re-inventing Economics" on Project Syndicate. Professor Shiller points out that the free market ideology fails to identify bubbles. Because of the belief that markets know best on all occasions, bubbles cannot occur according to the free market ideology. Professor Shiller's approach pursues a different branch of the Keynesian school of thought than the big spenders. Rather than advocate large government spending to avert a depression, Professor Shiller proposes using techniques from behavioral psychology to predict bubbles in advance. In this way, the socially harmful effects of massive misallocations of capital that arose in the case of the housing bubble or the tech bubble could be prevented in the future. In his other recent article, "Echo Chamber of Boom and Bust" in the New York Times, Professor Shiller elaborates further on the techniques that one could use for studying bubbles. Briefly, the process by which confidence or panic spreads in markets is very similar to the process by which diseases spread among populations. This outlook allows for introducing methods that scientists use to study epidemics into the study of bubbles. (v) The Keynesians have also managed to re-write the conventional wisdom on the advantages of a strong dollar. Through the works of Professors Barry Eichengreen, Jeffrey Sachs and Ben Bernnake, a consensus has developed that attempting to support the gold standard was a major cause for the prolongation of the Great Depression. This has resulted in a viewpoint among economists that a devaluation of the dollar at present would help to reduce global imbalances by restoring the American manufacturing industry. The implications of this viewpoint were analyzed by Professor Feldstein in his July 2009 article "America's Saving Rate and the Dollar's Future" on Project Syndicate, with the conclusion that devaluation of the dollar would necessarily lead to a better future for GDP Fetishism - Project Syndicate 2/8/10 4:05 PM http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stiglitz116/English Page 3 of 3 America. Lost in this new interpretation is the fact that a stable dollar provides many economic benefits for America. The equity premium for American companies taking more risks globally, the transaction charges for providing market making facilities in global markets, and the provisions of liquidity for the currency of international trade are major drivers of economic growth for America, which derive from the dollar being the global reserve currency. (vi) Some other Keynesians have gone beyond questioning just the free market ideology. For example, in his latest article, "GDP Fetishism" on Project Syndicate, Professor Joseph Stiglitz proposes a broad set of economic indicators like health, well-being and sustainability rather than a narrow focus on GDP growth. Yet other developments imply that the rest of the world is steadily moving away from using the dollar as the main reserve currency. To finance this new global reserve system, the IMF has created $250 billion worth of Special Drawing Rights (SDR), and the IMF has indicated its intention to triple this allocation of $250 billion in the future. It would need a strong commitment from the policy-makers in America to re-claim for the dollar its position as the predominant global reserve currency. However, judging from the writings of American economists like Professor Feldstein, it appears that the consensus among professional economists favors devaluing the dollar instead. (vii) The official consensus is a result of a grand compromise between the Chicago School economists and the Keynesians.The conservative economists of the Chicago School would like to avoid the embarassment of getting publicly criticized for the failures of the efficient market hypothesis that this current economics crisis has severely exposed. So famous conservative economists like Professor Lucas have reached out for a consensus by indicating their willingness for a compromise. This compromise involves among other things, (a) foregoing raising concerns about the government's mismanagement of Fanie Mae and Freddie Mac, and (b) lending support to the Fed and the Treasury in their efforts to stabilize the economy, even if the methods that the Fed and the Treasury employ are highly inefficient. What are the Keynesians compromising on? Well, the Western liberal tradition has been intellectually bankrupt ever since the late 1960s. It is only the free market ideology of the Chicago School that has served as the driver of wealth creation in the advanced countries during the last four decades. Hence, the official consensus is a convenient compromise for the Keynesians to avoid asking difficult questions about the future of the Western liberal tradition. Instead, they would like to enact much drama in the media about the resurrection of their hero, John Maynard Keynes. (viii) One other characterizing feature of the official consensus in the economics profession is a collective tendency to "Blame It All On Obama". The conservative economists blame President Obama for not focusing adequately on America's ballooning national debt. The liberals, led by Professor Krugman, fault President Obama for getting distracted from the left's free spending ways by concerns on the size of the fiscal deficit. In the confusion that has ensued, President Obama's own team of economics advisors has fallen back on the official consensus in the economics profession. Availing themselves of the security provided by this official consensus, President Obama's economics team has misled the President thoroughly in economic matters. To begin with, the President is only empowered to administer the nation's affairs for a four year term. The projections put out by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for the deficits in the next decade are only a non-authoritative guidance for where the nation's finances would be, if current policies hold for the next decade. Instead, the democrats have been behaving as if the $9 trillion of additional public debt that the CBO projects for the next decade is already a given certainty. In particular, they have not been careful to mention clearly in public discussions how much of this extra spending can be attributed to the President's own spending plans in his current four-year term. Neither have they shown any concerns for taking the Fed and the Treasury to taks for their highly inefficient methods to stabilize the economy. Because of these instances of neglect, the public is not willing to trust the government in financial matters. President Obama has rapidly lost his approval ratings. Professor Lawrence Summers, Professor Christina Romer, Professor Austan Goolsbee and Professor Peter Orszag are directly responsible for this abuse of public trust. (ix) The official consensus has also prevented economists from recognizing that President Obama's universal message of tolerance and justice, which has been received very favorably all around the world, actually opens up vast areas of economic opportunity for America. Unfortunately, it does not matter, for the economists, whether George W. Bush or Barack Obama is in office. The most they can do is re-work their models to favor Keynesian policies, and to argue that the policies they propose arise directly from their number-crunching methods. One might be tempted to attribute this widespread consensus among economists to stick to a narrow theoretical interpretation of the current economic crisis, to the certainty afforded by the mathematical models, which have become indispensible through the course of the 20th century, for the development of economic theory. However, this would be a big mistake. The official consensus in the economics profession is primarily a result of undue influences of power and money. It is much less a result of mathematically based economic theory. In the longterm, this attitude among economists of sticking to an official consensus is going to do serious damage to the American economy. Some other aspects of the official consensus have been explained very well by Professor Kenneth Rogoff in his recent article, "The Confidence Game" on Project Syndicate. I recommend that the reader go through that article. The official consensus is the single largest threat to a robust recovery in the global economy. The official consensus also gravely misinterprets the events of the Great Depression. The implications of this misinterpretation bear directly on the economic health of America.

NO105 Lecture 9: Healthcare week 9

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