Escalating costs. Declining quality. Increasing chronic illness. We spend 17% of our disposable income on health care—more than food, housing or transportation. Yet, our return on this investment is dismal. Where is all the money going? Why can’t we crack the code and make health care more effective and efficient?

Many of the proposed solutions to our health care crisis rely on patients taking an increased role in choosing coverage and managing their own care. However, individuals can’t manage what they can’t understand. The level of health care literacy in this country is extremely low. Fourteen percent of our adult population (over 30 million people) have “below basic” literacy skills. According to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, nearly 90 million adults, almost half the population, have difficulty understanding and acting upon health information.

This is a clarion call for simplicity in health care communications. The complexity, use of jargon, and (many cynics feel) intentional obfuscation in our health care system must end. We feel passionately that simplifying patient-provider-payer communications and increasing transparency can make a game-changing impact on our health care system.

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The quest for cost-cutting overrides common sense. When the phone company wants to take the customer service phone number off the bill because “It encourages people to call,” you know that efficiency and cost-cutting have gone too far.

Have corporate executives lost their minds? Now there is technology that monitors the tone of your voice as you respond to telephone prompts, and when it detects increased irritation it offers you a live person. If you are so certain that you are causing irritation, remove the irritant. Don’t wait until I’m ready to strangle myself with the phone cord.

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