Modern Healthcare December 7, 2018
I began wrestling with the problem of a bloated healthcare sector and how it harmed U.S. industrial competitiveness during the presidency of George H.W. Bush, who just passed away at age 94.
During the 1980s, I covered the collapse of U.S. manufacturing for several publications in the Midwest. I wrote numerous stories about plant closings, the desperate straits of displaced workers and their communities, and how U.S. companies lagged their Japanese and German rivals in adopting the latest technologies.
As the recession of 1990-91 deepened, the Chicago Tribune asked me to go to Tokyo. “We need someone over there who understands business,” the foreign editor told me.
A few months after I arrived, the president, running behind in...