It has been many months since I last commented publicly about the state of America’s health care. Certainly on behalf of the Washington Health Foundation- it was all the way back to 2013 when the Board decided to suspend operations and wait for the right time in the future to revive the organization- again. The Healthiest State Blog was one casualty of that decision.
Now, it is time to speak up and act again. I write as the now volunteer President of the Washington Health Foundation, 2020 edition. I was the author of its first revival back in 1992, and was proud to be its President & CEO for twenty years. In early 2013, I left to be the President & CEO of the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association, a position from which I commented extensively about health care over seven years.
Retired in July of 2019, I have transitioned to a new pace of life and roles. More on that another time, or go to the new WHF website at WashHealthFoundation.org to read more about what WHF or I have been doing.
No, this first WHF blog of this next Washington Health Foundation era must address the formidable health issue now confronting us: Covid-19. This pandemic has spread throughout the globe and has struck tragically across our Nation- as I write this we are crossing 200,000 deaths attributable to the virus.
What follows is not intended to offend any one’s ideologies or political preferences, though views on the virus have become a political and cultural flashpoint for divisions across the Nation. But let’s be real and clear- this is not a hoax. It is the type of contagion that I, among many other health leaders, have been expecting and trying to prepare for, for many years.
During my time at the helm of WHF, way back near the turn of the millenium, I was traveling with the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce on a study and trade mission in China. We encountered what we thought was the big one. Scary as that was, the mutated virus of that time didn’t take hold globally. Nor did several other scares while I was working in Arizona, though the peril was clear enough that our Association implemented an emergency preparedness program for hospitals across the state, with pandemics as one of its targets.
Covid-19 had, and has, what those viruses didn’t- the ability to easily spread from human to human. Not since 1918 have we encountered such a threat. Estimates of the impact of that scourge range from 50 to 100 million dead. A fantastical empirical spread but lethal no matter what number you choose.
Covid-19 is worldwide, but few nations have struggled as much as we have with responding to it. Oddly to me, not all agree with this obvious conclusion. Nor do I have to write much about this split of opinion- you can’t escape the wild conflicting points of view on television or social media.
Count me on the side of believing that we need to follow the science of the matter at hand and implement a real plan to stop the virus. And yes, recognize that social distancing and masks are principal forms of defense, until such time as a safe and effective vaccine that enough people are willing to take is available and taken. Or a miracle occurs and we are able to move on.
There is little need to add me- or the Washington Health Foundation- to the chorus of health leaders saying such things. Instead let me use this forum to discuss how we might find a way forward together on this challenge rather than apart.
Some agreement, really any agreement, would allow us to respond with greater unity and effectiveness than what we have now. We know that won’t be in the political arena. Nor will it be around ideologies. There is just too much noise, distrust, and inbred context setting going on to believe that such leaps are possible in these worlds.
This is not new. It was the common view about the state of health care and health reform back at the turn of the millennium. Perhaps the division is more stark and virulent now- but it is only a matter of degree. Few believed that there could be any unity or even consensus on health reform back around 2000.
Our Foundation then believed that health change was most necessary and that we should try to find a path forward with agreement among the public that might spread up to political leaders. We set out to find some commonality among Washingtonians not by pounding the usual political and ideologic splits, but by seeking to identify our core values about health and health reform.
Over a number of months, we held structured dialogues in communities across the state. Forty in all, and at least one in every one of our 39 counties. Through this, we constructed a Values Map for the state, and brought this to a Leadership Forum to consider if there was enough agreement statewide to move forward together. We found it- over 170 state and local leaders signed on to a resolution calling on us to move forward together despite our disagreements, including leaders in both political parties.
The basis of the agreement were the values we found and debated. There was enough consensus to electronically vote to prioritize these at the Summit. The first three were Fairness, Redesign of the Health System, and Re-allocate Existing Resources.
Using this as our base, we were able to capture a commitment to move ahead together. This was based on these values and our vision toward these- that Washington should and could strive to be the Healthiest State in the Nation. And, yes, we found things, many things, through what became the Healthiest State in the Nation Campaign, that we could almost all agree on to collectively and individually do to improve health. We even found policy elements that most could agree on as we offered up a Healthiest State Policy Agenda during the Affordable Care Act debate.
I tell this story to emphasize that it is possible to turn around the conflict that now engulfs us. On the virus, on our current state of health reform, on many issues. But the starting point is to find what we hold in common as Values, or through a shared Vision. These are opportunities to move ahead together- if we just do the hard work to try and find them.
As we move through the next phase of the virus, our election, and whatever we encounter next, let us commit to finding these values, and activating these as a vision that sets a new common path forward for the pursuit of health and health care across this state and the Nation. The Washington Health Foundation stands ready to help with this- again.
Greg Vigdor
Union, Washington
September 27, 2020