Workforce

It's official. On Monday the National Bureau of Economic Research confirmed that the U.S. has been in a recession since December 2007. This news came as no surprise to many consumers. They have been feeling the impact of escalating unemployment rates and increasing food and other costs for quite some time. Many people have been struggling to afford basic needs like food, child care, housing, and transportation and this financial stress often spills over into the workplace. Employers are taking notice of the stress and are providing some help.

Last week in an article published by the Wall Street Journal titled "Crisis Help via Work," they reported that more and more workers are feeling stress from job pressures and from the turmoil in the financial markets. To help alleviate this stress, some employers are offering free financial counseling. In the article, the WSJ cited an EAP program that provides assistance with budgeting and debt reduction by certified financial planners, accountants, and attorneys through confidential telephone counseling sessions. This sounds like a win-win solution to help workers deal with stress and to help employers gain more productive employees, but there are some challenges in engaging more employers to adopt this service.

Dr. Benjamin Brewer, in his Wall Street Journal column (subscription, or read a summary in the Wall Street Journal health blog) wonders: who will take care of the 47 million uninsured in a system that already undervalues family medicine and primary care?

We would suggest that the uninsured are getting care – not enough care, too- late care, expensive emergency room care instead of more appropriate and cost-effective primary care. But Dr. Brewer’s central point is correct. Our system gives short shrift to primary care and is chockfull of incentives for fragmented specialization. In the health care system we envision for the future, primary care doctors (internists, family doctors, pediatricians, geriatricians, perhaps for some women OB/GYNs) would play an elevated role in coordinating patient care. And they would be paid for doing it well.