Taking Back Healthcare
It comes as no surprise that healthcare has a checkered and controversial history with the American public. For over 20 years, the middle class has fought a long wage stagnation and decline, which is the very definition of economic depression. But one Lambda Chi member is fighting back against the system he perceives as flawed.
Dave Chase (University of Washington, ’87) joined Lambda Chi his sophomore year after meeting several members at a social gathering. Immediately, he knew the values and goals of the fraternity were for him, and he hit the ground running from the time he joined. Throughout his time on campus, Chase held the offices of High Tau and High Alpha, while also serving on the Student Advisory Committee (SAC).
Following graduation, Chase found himself at one of the largest companies in the world: Microsoft. There, he revolutionized the company’s healthcare platform business, a 2 billion dollar endeavor. Chase also served as the CEO and co-founder of Avado, a startup healthcare business that was eventually acquired by WebMD. It was during this process, as Chase delved deeper and deeper into the business, that he started to look at the American healthcare model with skepticism.
Chase says that he began to realize that America could go to war for far less than what we are paying for healthcare. And that was not ok.
“It’s not because employers are stingy, they are spending far more than they did 20 years ago on employees,” said Chase. “The problem is every dollar, and then some, has gone to pay for healthcare.”
According to Chase and other sources, such as Bill Gates, half of a millennial’s lifetime earnings will go into the healthcare system. This should hit home with undergraduates, says Chase, because healthcare has basically devastated education budgets and is driving up tuition costs.
So the question becomes what can we do, the focus of Chase’s recent TEDx talk (featured above). The solutions begin with recent graduates, such as Lambda Chi members, all across the nation.
“Don’t wait for D.C., it’s on us,” said Chase. “It’s going to take a lot of us to change it; the younger you are, the more you kind of have your future and what’s at stake in terms of driving this change. The great news is that the solutions are already there.”
Chase and his colleagues have been working hard to provide tangible solutions, in the form of the Health Rosetta Institute. The Institute’s main goal is to “accelerate adoption of practical, non-partisan fixes to healthcare’s root causes of dysfunction.”
Through this platform and events, such as the TEDx event, Chase hopes to continue bringing awareness and reforming the healthcare system. Only then can the the nation take back the American Dream.
“I’ve just become very passionate about how I can help catalyze this kind of bottom-up movement,” said Chase. “These type of things never start top down when they get solved, whether it is civil rights or climate change, they always start bottom up.”
For more information on the Health Rosetta Institute, click here.
