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The Opioid Crisis Wake-Up Call: Health Care is Stealing the American Dream. Here's How We Take it Back.
"Dave Chase is the first and just about only person that's ever been able to give me hope and a real pathway to fundamental change in our convoluted health care system."
― Paul Shoemaker, Founding President of Social Venture Partners International, Author of Can't Not The Compelling Social Drive that Changes Our World. Named one of the "Top 50 Most Influential People in the Nonprofit Sector" by The NonProfit Times, and "Philanthropist of the Year" by Future in Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The opioid crisis is not an anomaly. Instead, it's a self-inflicted wound, driven by a catastrophically dysfunctional health care system, leading to what has become the largest public health crisis in 100 years. Fortunately, proven antidotes exist -- all created and spearheaded by forward-looking citizen leaders and employers. It's time to scale these solutions nationwide, stop the crisis in its tracks and move us light years closer to solving the larger disaster that is our health care system.
As you read this, countless people are leaving clinics and hospitals with over 30-day supplies of opioids for lower back pain, and other diagnoses for which opioids have little evidence of helping. Further, people are receiving opioid prescriptions for procedures where evidence-based medicine doesn't justify such as many spinal procedures and asymptomatic wisdom tooth removal.
We need to mobilize the resources necessary to help those already enslaved by opioid use disorders. At the same time, we also need to turn off the enormous flow of people becoming addicted. Only by traveling upstream to stop addiction before it starts will we ever clean up the opioid crisis--and prevent future floods of addiction.
In The Opioid Crisis Wake-Up Call, Dave Chase explores the already-existing solutions to the largest public health crisis in a 100 years, updating and expanding on the content and themes from his 2017 bestseller, The CEO's Guide to Restoring the American Dream. Here he uncovers the upstream fixes designed to stop the crisis at its source. Chase's message is resolving the opioid crisis, at the CEO, citizen, and community level, brings us miles closer to fixing the systemic failures of U.S. health care.
― Paul Shoemaker, Founding President of Social Venture Partners International, Author of Can't Not The Compelling Social Drive that Changes Our World. Named one of the "Top 50 Most Influential People in the Nonprofit Sector" by The NonProfit Times, and "Philanthropist of the Year" by Future in Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The opioid crisis is not an anomaly. Instead, it's a self-inflicted wound, driven by a catastrophically dysfunctional health care system, leading to what has become the largest public health crisis in 100 years. Fortunately, proven antidotes exist -- all created and spearheaded by forward-looking citizen leaders and employers. It's time to scale these solutions nationwide, stop the crisis in its tracks and move us light years closer to solving the larger disaster that is our health care system.
As you read this, countless people are leaving clinics and hospitals with over 30-day supplies of opioids for lower back pain, and other diagnoses for which opioids have little evidence of helping. Further, people are receiving opioid prescriptions for procedures where evidence-based medicine doesn't justify such as many spinal procedures and asymptomatic wisdom tooth removal.
We need to mobilize the resources necessary to help those already enslaved by opioid use disorders. At the same time, we also need to turn off the enormous flow of people becoming addicted. Only by traveling upstream to stop addiction before it starts will we ever clean up the opioid crisis--and prevent future floods of addiction.
In The Opioid Crisis Wake-Up Call, Dave Chase explores the already-existing solutions to the largest public health crisis in a 100 years, updating and expanding on the content and themes from his 2017 bestseller, The CEO's Guide to Restoring the American Dream. Here he uncovers the upstream fixes designed to stop the crisis at its source. Chase's message is resolving the opioid crisis, at the CEO, citizen, and community level, brings us miles closer to fixing the systemic failures of U.S. health care.
440 pages, Paperback
Published September 4, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 30, 2018
This book offers a terrific account of the structural incentives that drive rising costs in employer-sponsored health coverage. Chase lays bare several hidden and poorly understood incentives and financial flows among employers, brokers, health plans and administrators, healthcare providers, and pharmacy benefit managers. Really excellent stuff there, comprehensible to a lay reader, but with valuable content even for healthcare insiders.
Unfortunately, these five-star ideas are presented in a two-star package. Chase tries too hard to market both the book and his new healthcare consulting firm. For example, this book isn't really about opioids, despite the attention-grabbing title; Chase primarily discusses general pricing dynamics, but throws in one chapter and the occasional throwaway line illustrating how those same dynamics helped to fuel the opioid crisis. (If you're looking for a deep dive on opioids, consider Quinones's Dreamland.)
As for Chase's proposed solutions, he offers some interesting strategies for employers to restructure and renegotiate their employee benefit plans. He then proceeds, however, with a broader discussion of healthcare delivery reform that is neither terribly original nor presented in a balanced fashion.
For example, Chase suggests that employers construct narrow networks built around primary care gatekeepers and capitated or bundled payments. That doesn't sound so very different from the familiar HMO and PPO models we've already tried. He states that his "transparent open network" concept, if properly implemented, will not produce the problems associated with those models; he didn't explain the secret sauce, though, beyond offering platitudes about contracting with high-quality providers at lower cost and perhaps building in value-based purchasing (which is, of course, precisely what many HMOs and PPOs say they're doing).
Elsewhere, he mentions a healthcare provider that "created a platform allowing doctors and patients to [...] collaborate [on] individualized care plans without the constraints of a broken system." Many providers now offer patient platforms, however, and Chase doesn't explain what makes this one so special.
The earlier chapters evinced Chase's ability to tease apart the complex financial incentives that have contributed to rising costs for employer-sponsored health plans. I was disappointed that he didn't bring that same rigor when articulating his proposed reforms. I would have preferred either a shorter book that excised the fluff, or a longer book of more even quality.
Unfortunately, these five-star ideas are presented in a two-star package. Chase tries too hard to market both the book and his new healthcare consulting firm. For example, this book isn't really about opioids, despite the attention-grabbing title; Chase primarily discusses general pricing dynamics, but throws in one chapter and the occasional throwaway line illustrating how those same dynamics helped to fuel the opioid crisis. (If you're looking for a deep dive on opioids, consider Quinones's Dreamland.)
As for Chase's proposed solutions, he offers some interesting strategies for employers to restructure and renegotiate their employee benefit plans. He then proceeds, however, with a broader discussion of healthcare delivery reform that is neither terribly original nor presented in a balanced fashion.
For example, Chase suggests that employers construct narrow networks built around primary care gatekeepers and capitated or bundled payments. That doesn't sound so very different from the familiar HMO and PPO models we've already tried. He states that his "transparent open network" concept, if properly implemented, will not produce the problems associated with those models; he didn't explain the secret sauce, though, beyond offering platitudes about contracting with high-quality providers at lower cost and perhaps building in value-based purchasing (which is, of course, precisely what many HMOs and PPOs say they're doing).
Elsewhere, he mentions a healthcare provider that "created a platform allowing doctors and patients to [...] collaborate [on] individualized care plans without the constraints of a broken system." Many providers now offer patient platforms, however, and Chase doesn't explain what makes this one so special.
The earlier chapters evinced Chase's ability to tease apart the complex financial incentives that have contributed to rising costs for employer-sponsored health plans. I was disappointed that he didn't bring that same rigor when articulating his proposed reforms. I would have preferred either a shorter book that excised the fluff, or a longer book of more even quality.
October 11, 2018
By now, I think the majority of people here in the US know that we have a major problem with opioid addiction. Several excellent books have been written on the topic of how we got to this place. With this book, Dave Chase starts where the crisis left us, in a healthcare crisis, and he leads the way out. While the target audience is community leaders and others in leadership positions who are most able to affect change, this book can be read by anyone wanting to understand why the system is so broken and how we can fix it.
This is a complex topic concerning healthcare and politics, and there is just no way to make that kind of content light or, for most of us, particularly fun. But it is absolutely a vital topic that we all need to understand and work to correct. Chase does an excellent job of ripping the system into little pieces, then laying those pieces out for us in a way that makes sense. Once unraveled, he makes this complex topic seem simple, at least at its core.
Whether you're personally dealing with addiction, you know someone who is, or you're one of the few whose life hasn't somehow been touched by opioid addiction, the resulting healthcare crisis hurts us all equally. If you don't want to tackle all this material yourself, maybe buy a few copies and hand them out to city officials, doctors, church leaders, and anyone else in a position to lead the way toward change.
This is a complex topic concerning healthcare and politics, and there is just no way to make that kind of content light or, for most of us, particularly fun. But it is absolutely a vital topic that we all need to understand and work to correct. Chase does an excellent job of ripping the system into little pieces, then laying those pieces out for us in a way that makes sense. Once unraveled, he makes this complex topic seem simple, at least at its core.
Whether you're personally dealing with addiction, you know someone who is, or you're one of the few whose life hasn't somehow been touched by opioid addiction, the resulting healthcare crisis hurts us all equally. If you don't want to tackle all this material yourself, maybe buy a few copies and hand them out to city officials, doctors, church leaders, and anyone else in a position to lead the way toward change.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews