The Healthcare Revolution
"The times they are a'changin' …" and society is racing to keep up. Technological revolutions unimagined just a few years ago are now commonplace – and these come at a time where the American landscape and the world community are also changing almost beyond recognition.
The Cold War, which dominated the national priorities and individual expectations of an entire generation, ended – seemingly overnight – and with its passing, America is struggling to find new directions, new issues on which to focus its nearly-boundless energy. One possibility is to replace the Cold War with "disease" as America's number-one national priority.
Appropriate health care for all has been one issue fighting for national attention. However, the issue keeps getting muddled by fights over government mandates, media exposes about managed care systems that seem to do neither, and a lack of appreciation – in government and the media, if not among the people themselves – of the roles of the individual and the opportunities for healing offered by the various global healthcare disciplines.
Even when the government knows the truth, little seems to come of this knowledge. For instance:
"The Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs received convincing evidence of the correlation between diet and physical health. Medical experts are aware of the relationship between an individual's dietary habits and the risk of obesity, heart disease, and cancer. The weight of the scientific evidence is sufficiently strong that this nutritional information should be put immediately before the American people. To do otherwise would be irresponsible. The public is then in a position to make informed individual judgments."
Senator Robert Dole - 1977
Senator Dole made those remarks before the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs in 1977 – twenty years ago. If action is to be take, it will have to come from the private sector – and if individuals want the truth about health, nutrition and other related issues, they need a resource … like HealthWorld Online.
Impact of the Baby Boomers
With the first Baby Boomers having just turned 50, both personal choice and the perceived value of health care services, products and professional assistance will be playing an increasingly important role in healthcare.
By their very nature, Baby Boomers want direct, honest answers to issues that impact their lives – they take little for granted, grant little power to "authority," and seek both real perceived value AND the information needed to make decisions about their own lives. In this, they are automatically at odds with an economically-driven "sick-care" system of Managed Care that succeeds best when it regiments and controls patients, treating them as standardized units of care, rather than individuals.
Graying Boomers
This trend toward prudence will only accelerate as the graying of America proceeds – by 2010, the number of over-65 citizens will double, and their impact will be all out of proportion to their impressive numbers. They will demand both a high quality of personal health and access to the information, goods and services they need to achieve that health.
Almost certainly, they will NOT turn to the government for those answers. Regardless of the outcome of the current pre-election squabbling between Congress and the President, between Republican and Democrat, the trend toward personal empowerment and rejection of government "answers" (i.e., mandates) will only grow as the aging boomers realize that more government is not the answer. They will increasingly place their trust in their own judgment – and to do so, they want more information, more answers.
J. Walker Smith, of Yankelovich Partners Inc., which has been tracking the USA's values and lifestyles for more than 25 years, says, "Many Americans have lost faith in society's institutions -- government, the news media, doctors. But the online world, with its vast ability to gather information, communicate and even publish globally, suggests a new kind of empowerment."
USA Today, August 28, 1995
The Information Revolution
The Information Superhighway is more than a concept – far more than a dream. It is the first entirely new system of communications since Marconi invented the radio and shattered the "tyranny of print" – and in its way, it has far more potential impact than television. Unlike TV, the Information Superhighway is interactive – and on-demand. Each user is free to search the whole world for information – information that will empower them to take more control of their own lives … for health, entertainment and community service. The impact will be felt in the commercial arena – but a far greater impact will be felt in individual lives. The Baby Boomers especially trust cyberspace for what it can do – deliver information, free, unfiltered and unregulated by established authority.
By the year 2000, 50 MILLION PEOPLE will have Net access from home (up from nearly 11 million now), according Forrester Research Inc.
US News & World Report, January 29, 1996
The media has already discovered the poignant story of handicapped individuals who can suddenly become self-supporting – but has largely missed the more important, universal story: Via the Internet, those individuals have gone from being isolated islands, trapped in bodies that have tragically failed to perform, and been transformed into fully integrated members of a world-wide community in which the only standards of performance are intellect and the will to take control of their lives. Through the Internet, they have become "connected" to the rest of the world.
Those individuals are the visible vanguard of a far greater movement – individual empowerment through individual knowledge – and access to information. First and foremost, the Internet is a knowledge-distribution system – a global, cross-referenced library of truly immense proportions. To date, its only limitations have been the difficulty of traversing the highway – and these difficulties are being resolved, simplified seemingly at the speed of light.
Internet-in-a-Box
Those difficulties are melting away – but the real transformation has already begun. Systems are being field-tested that would put small boxes – mini-computers – on top of television sets. These boxes would connect to the "Net" through existing cable TV lines or through home phone lines – and in the blink of an eye, home TVs will become interactive gateways to a world of information – and the Internet will become one more channel, available to virtually anyone with a TV and a phone.
Think of a $500 net terminal as an information retrieval appliance. Soon, you'll be getting on the net in a different way. Not "soon" like in the next two weeks, but soon as in the next couple of years. And your new on-ramp will probably change your entire relationship to the online world.
Netguide/Feb. '96
Can this really be done? Even die-hard pessimists see it coming, though they say that it may take three to five years to develop that system. However, realists see it coming within a year – wisely, they note that, in the three years – just THREE YEARS! – since the World Wide Web first came into being, nearly 50 million people worldwide have logged on … yet the revolutions in hardware, software and delivery have always grown faster than demand.
Ninety-five percent of those who have used the Internet believe it soon will change American life "dramatically."
USA Today, August 28, 1995
When the Internet switches from the domain of the computer-literate to the living rooms of TV viewers, the new, broader demographics will give the Internet a far greater impact on society than it has already achieved. When the common man and woman – rather than just the self-appointed computer elite – have access to this world of information, a new, exciting paradigm will emerge. Those now-powerful forces in society – governments, professions, the media, major institutions of all kinds – that maintain their power by restricting individuals' access to information will have to transform themselves, to embrace the new paradigm.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
Some 24 million people in the U.S. and Canada alone are already on the Internet -- fully 11% of the North American population over age 16, according to the new survey by Dun & Bradstreet Corp.'s Nielsen Media Research unit. An impressive 17.6 million people use the World Wide Web, the multimedia business district on the Internet, and of those, nearly one-quarter use the Web to peek at the on-screen displays of their business rivals.
Researchers said nearly 37 million people have access to the Internet in the U.S. and Canada, indicating an even larger potential audience for advertisers.
"It looks like Godot has arrived," said G.M. O'Connell, president of on-line advertisers Modem Media LP. Old-line advertisers have been reluctant to plunge into the on-line market in part because of a lack of firm numbers on the audience. 'Now,' he said, 'they can't ignore it."
Wall Street Journal, October 30, 1995
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