Obama's Health Care Bill: Change for Change Sake?

Minutes after posting Why Change Management Fails - pointing out that change often fails because the underlying strategy is flawed or too risky - I was confronted with a similar issue involving President Obama's controversial health care initiative. In fact, the similarities to the issues I outlined in that post are downright eerie. As such, I would characterize the risk of failure as extremely high.

Yesterday, President Obama was quoted as saying, "We've talked this problem to death, year after year, but unless we act, and act now, none of this will change. The need for change in the nation's health care system is urgent and indisputable."

Actually, the only thing about this health care bill that appears to be indisputable is that it's a huge, gut-wrenching change to the American health care system and congressional leaders are nervous that it's being shoved down America's throat before its implications have been sufficiently analyzed.
At a senate budget committee hearing last week, Doug Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, said this:

In the legislation that has been reported we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount. And on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs.

In fact, House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said, "No one wants to tell the Speaker (Nancy Pelosi) that she's moving too fast and they damn sure don't want to tell the president."

Likewise, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said, "I want to make it very clear that there's progressives, Blue Dogs and everybody in between who have expressed concerns ..."

Not only does this situation seem consistent with the way the stimulus bill was handled, but its similarities to failed corporate strategy change programs, like the one I chronicled in yesterday's post, are stark and real.

As I stated there, "Success in business involves risk. [And] when it comes to mission-critical change, the risk of failure has far more to do with risk associated with the underlying strategy than the change process itself."

In the case of the health care bill, I'd say that both the underlying strategy and the process are risky. In my experience, compounding risk upon risk - for the sake of change or for any other reason - is a very bad idea. But that's just me. What do you think? And please, let's try to keep politics out of this. This is about the effect of executives pushing risk ahead of analysis, plain and simple.

Also, check out: Change Management: It's the Strategy, Stupid