IT HAS TO BE GENUINE, OR IT WILL FAIL

At Baxter, we felt so passionate about the fact that there were millions of people in the United States without health insurance that we raised attention to the issue. As a result, I was invited to testify before Congress in 2002 in my capacity as CEO of Baxter and chairman of the Healthcare Leadership Council's Executive Task Force on the Uninsured. As I told the subcommittee, “We have both experience and ideas concerning reaching out to individuals and small businesses to begin reducing the number of uninsured Americans. And, through our grassroots initiatives, we are gaining additional insights in how to attack the educational and administrative barriers that stand in the way of broader health coverage for working families.”

Although our message was well received, it did raise some questions about our interest in the issue. As one congressman pointed out, “You're a big medical products company. Of course you would be in favor of having more people insured, because then you would have more customers for your products.”

Although his point of view would appear to be both logical and understandable, I explained that, in fact, increasing the number of people with access to health insurance would probably reduce our potential customer base. Our products were sold primarily to hospitals. People who are uninsured typically go to an emergency room to access care when that becomes necessary. If these people were insured and could go to a primary care physician instead of waiting until a condition worsened to the point of needing to go to the hospital, there would most likely be less demand for our products.

“Then why are you here?” the congressman wanted to know.

“Because it's the right thing to do,” I explained.

The congressman's question, however, proved an important point. If we had been insincere or disingenuous in any way, we would have failed.