While the economy continues to try to find its legs and most people are focused on what is wrong, there are leaders and innovators busy creating the market and leading companies of the future. At this very moment, people and companies are innovating paradigm-shifting products and services, climbing to the top of their own industries. The procurement leaders of the future are busy too. They are taking stock of their supply base, working with their engineers to tweak product designs so they use less of more expensive raw materials, and they are evaluating new savings and value opportunities. In this challenging environment, procurement leaders are also seeking additional strategic competitive advantage, especially around re-evaluating past decisions, moving toward using the input of new information about commodities, markets and global competition.

[More]

With the House scrambling to find enough votes to pass the healthcare reform bill, one question remains surprisingly unanswered. It's no secret that one of the driving forces behind President Obama's election and his push on healthcare reform is the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Yet reducing Medicare payments by $500 billion over ten years will undoubtedly hit the finances of most U.S. hospitals. Medicare already pays less than private insurance companies, and now that gap will be even larger. While insurance companies may very well pick up new paying customers several years down the road when the benefits portion of the bill kicks in, in the meantime they may be forced to add to their own financial risk in the short-term by eliminating preexisting condition. Even then, at least in the short term, it is highly unlikely that they will be able to make up for what the hospitals will lose in the Medicare cuts. A few short weeks ago it seemed that it would be almost impossible to guess how all of this would play out in real life.

[More]

The President made health-care reform (now known as "health-insurance reform") one of the signature items of his agenda. And in spite of what seemed like a resounding rejection of his health-care approach by the voters of Massachusetts in electing Republican Scott Brown to fill the seat held by Ted Kennedy for decades, he made it clear in his State of the Union address that he remains resolute in moving the plan forward, even if no one really understands it, or knows what is in either bill, or what will really happen if it's passed. For example, both bills appear to create large new government beauracracies with the power to take whatever would pass and turn it into whatever the President ultimately wants. Underlying the push for reform is the belief on the part of the administration and the Democrats that health care is a fundamental right.

[More]

Lately I have been receiving a lot of glossy color mailings from my congressman. I live in an area with a high senior-citizen population, so assuaging fears about the impact of health-care reform is a high priority for this congressman. As I read the content related to Medicare, I am once again drawn to the language that talks about these bills protecting and defending Medicare. But as I understand both Senate and House versions of health reform, enormous amounts of money ($500 billion over ten years) will be cut from Medicare. Without any changes at all, Medicare is expected to run out of money in 2017, only seven years from now. So how can a half-trillion be cut while "protecting and defending Medicare"? The short answer is that it can't. But that is where it gets interesting.

[More]

With much fanfare, the Senate passed its version of health-care reform on Christmas Eve morning. In spite of the victory laps run after every step in the process, there is every reason to believe that some of the projected Medicare savings were counted twice in order to arrive at an expenditure figure below the ten-year/one-trillion-dollar threshold.

[More]