The cover story in this week's Pitch ends with a scene that took place in Topeka on March 31.
The Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee was questioning three members of the Kansas Health Policy Authority's board of directors, to decide whether the board members should be re-appointed for another term. At the hearing, Kansas state Sen. Jeff Colyer sparred over health-care reform with E.J. "Ned" Holland, Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Communications for Embarq. Afterward, one of the other senators on the committee called it "the best health-care debate" she'd heard.
There's a reason for that. Holland has been talking about health-care reform for a long time. In fact, his seemingly off-the-cuff jokes about revolution not working in this country -- at least for a couple hundred years -- and about Americans being "raging incrementalists" were actually parts of a speech he's given many times.
The first time I heard it, I was at Embarq's headquarters, sitting in Holland's tenth-floor corner
office overlooking scenic I-435 and Nall. Holland, the company's Senior Vice President for Human Resources and Communications, keeps a
big glass jar of peanut M&Ms on his granite conference table.
Holland started his career representing hospitals as a lawyer for Spencer, Fane, Britt & Browne back in 1968.
"I made a lot of money representing hospitals," he told me.
"Then in '92, I switched sides. I became a purchaser. I've bought
health-care for three Fortune 500 companies." (Before working at Embarq, he was a vice president at Sprint and, before that, Payless Cashways.) As he told Kansas senators last week, he estimates he's bought several billions of dollars worth of health care for more than 250,000 employees, spouses and dependents in all 50 states. Working at such big corporations, Holland was able to bypass insurance-company
middle-men and buy coverage directly from doctors and hospitals. Big
companies enjoy economies of scale this way -- but even that's not
enough anymore.
That's what struck me the second time I came across Holland's arguments for health-care reform -- this time, in remarks he gave in September 2008 before the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce's Subcommittee on Health. Long, but well worth the time, Holland's testimony (here's a PDF) is an easy-to-understand primer on what Holland describes as "trying to solve a social problem [access to health care] on the back of the employer-employee relationship."
So why wasn't Holland re-appointed to another term on the Kansas Health Policy Authority's board of directors?
On April 3, Holland withdrew his name for consideration. Citing professional and personal obligations and acknowledging "major changes in the leadership in Kansas with respect to health care and other issues," his abrupt goodbye letter was a drastic change in tone from his
passionate testimony in front of the senate committee just three days
earlier. At that hearing, Holland had been a strong voice for reform.
Which was apparently a problem.
According to this report, some Republicans objected to Holland's continued presence on the KHPA.
This isn't the sort of thing a reporter can prove, but having witnessed the March 31 Senate hearing and spent much of the last two months researching politicians' response to health-care reform efforts in Kansas, I have a theory: When a rich guy from a Fortune 500 company -- someone powerful, instead of some lowly activist -- says the system doesn't work, it threatens all sorts of other powerful interests. Some Kansas politicians would rather not deal with the truth.
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The reason he withdrew abruptly is because his friend, Kathleen Sebelius, got confirmed to be part of Obama's administration and she has selected E.J. Holland to be her assistant in Washington DC. He knew he was going to get that job the minute she got confirmed. So, now he will be the true liberal socialist he's always wanted to be in his life.
I worked with Ned when he engaged in one of his, "bypass insurance-company middle-men and buy coverage directly from doctors and hospitals" projects. This was at the end of 2001. He purchased comprehensive healthcare services from HMCC (Health Midwest Comprehensive Care) a 2,400 physician and 20 hospital PHO. I always found Ned to be honorable and trustworthy. The relationship lasted six years and the savings to Sprint was substantial. The Business Journal reported $100 million savings over a four-year period of time.
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