The State of Misery

If Kansas City is ever going to prosper in a major way, the folks in Jefferson City must begin to see how sharply we (in KC and throughout western Missouri) suffer from every bad decision they make, and they make a whole lot more bad moves than the folks in Topeka do. In the case of healthcare, the move is as bad as it gets. In fact, the economic consequences of the health care crisis are devastating.

Several years ago Michelle and I took a tour along the Rhine River. In northern France, we happened to meet a vintner who, upon learning of our home state, tried to offer a compliment.

"Some of best wine produced in America," he gushed in his halting English, "comes from the state of misery."

We think he meant "Missouri," but he may just have been looking down the road to the great health care crisis of 2004 and the misery that is now being afflicted on our citizens.

Given the French understanding of crisis—their history is an endless string of them—we turn to the French for the title of our cover story. "Mayday," from the French infinitive, m’aider, or in English, "Help me."

"Mayday" is what Missouri doctors and administrators are crying right now, "Help me." If there is no immediate and dramatic change in the way the state regulates medical lawsuits, patients will soon be crying "mayday" also, this time out of real, physical, unrelieved pain—in many cases the outcome will be fatal. They will begin to understand that the French vintner did not make a mistake when he called our fair state "misery."

In the Industry Outlook this month, hospital administrators, CEOs, physicians, and healthcare professionals share their immediate concern for the state of Missouri’s healthcare crisis.

Let me add a more protracted problem, one that has thrown a wrench in the economic development strategy of our city, state and region. Over the last few years, we have shared with the reader the ambitions of local leaders to position the KC area—and Missouri—as a center for the life sciences.

Beyond the research component, to become a center for the life sciences, the city, state and region need lots of a given commodity—practicing physicians and cutting-edge healthcare professionals. As you will learn in this issue, doctors and physician groups across America have already launched a de facto boycott of the state. They don’t want to practice here. It’s not just that liability premiums are outrageously high and getting higher. It’s that the state of Missouri, unlike Kansas, has shown that it does not value its doctors—

certainly not as much as it values its politically more sophisticated trial lawyers.

Kansas City feels the pain of this devaluation more acutely than any other city or region in the state, especially St. Louis. The liability crisis in Illinois is almost as bad as it is in Missouri. A St. Louis doctor gains less and travels more if he takes his practice across the Mississippi. For Kansas City area and western Missouri physicians, the lure to cross the state line is much stronger.

Indeed, if Kansas City is ever going to prosper in a major way, the folks

in Jefferson City must begin to see how sharply we (in KC and throughout western Missouri) suffer from every bad decision they make, and they make a whole lot more bad moves than the folks in Topeka do. In the case of healthcare, the move is as bad as it gets. In fact, the economic consequences of the healthcare crisis are devastating.

Let’s face it. Doctors, like other business people, move to a state or region because its leaders create a healthy environment for them to succeed.

No business of any sort has ever moved to a state because its government has created a healthy environment for its trial lawyers. As the French might say, au contraire.

Regards,

Editor-In-Chief & Publisher

jsweeney@ingramsonline.com