Out-of-the-box solutions for re-contextualizing and fixing the funding problem with healthcare are needed. Use of complementary currencies is explored as a way to to do so with some isolation from increasingly fragile debt-based currencies, while improving the quality of care. The context is Canada, but not limited to that.

1. Complementary
Currencies
for
Health Care
Mark Szpakowski
szpak@eastlink.ca

2. Context: Money Today
National currencies / legal tender
Money as debt (the movie)
The crash of unlimited growth (the news)

3. Context: $Crisis
• The more debt, the more money
• Total financial derivatives debt: $600 Trillion
• Total global GDP: $60 Trillion
• Crash! Bubbles are built in!

4. Complementary Currencies
• Targeted and Regional
• Money as wealth rather than debt
• Counter-cyclical (anti-bubbles)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementary_currency

5. Examples
• Around us - CDN Tire, Air Miles, Linden $
• Historical - Bali; Europe; Brazil
• Time Dollars - Ithaca Hours; fureai kippu
• Targeted - elder care; health care
• Regional - connect resources to needs

6. Money as wealth
• wealth: forward days of survival
• resources in the ground
• are a better store of value
• than money in the bank
• Terra - based on basket of commodities
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Lietaer

7. Open Money Today
• Complementary Currency Apps
• + Web Social Networking
• + Ubiquitous Devices
• => Open Money
• Explosion of interest and innovation!

8. Open Money
• A platform for multiple currencies
• Not an individual currency design
• Enabled by WWW infrastructure
• And by ubiquitous devices (eg, cell phones)

9. Health Care Context
• Nova Scotia example:
• Costs today: 50% of NS Provincial Budget
• Costs tomorrow: 100%
• 1 day in hospital: $6000
• 80% of costs: labour

10. Health Care
• Wicked problem
• Cannot be solved within the same framing
• Complementary currencies: reframe?

11. Health Care Reframing
• Hypothesis: CC can reframe Health Care
• CC can remove costs from national $
• Move much labour costing to CC
• Move some goods costing to CC

12. HC Use Case 1
• Health Care dollars: $HC
• Anne takes care of Betty for 1 hour
• Anne gets 1 $HC

13. HC Use Case 2
• Anne needs health care
• Anne spends 1 $HC, paying Charles
• Charles has $HC available for self/family
• Charles buys service X with $HC

14. HC Use Case 3
• Charles pays hospital for care with $HC
• Hospital buys health gadget from Acme
• Hospital pays Acme $CDN + $HC
• Acme pays employees $CDN + $HC
• Employees pay for health care with $HC

15. Context: Regionality
• CCs can encourage regional circulation
• Regionality is a good thing
• Lower transportation costs
• Lower carbon/climate costs
• Local care for local resources & people
• Isolation from self-destructive debt $

16. HC Resources, Needs
• Elder Care
• Example: Japan’s Fureai Kippu
• Share the Care/Volunteer groups
• Professional caregivers
• Resources and commodities

17. The Leverage Point
• Health Care Electronic Infostructure
• Unified Health Record
• Health Telepresence
• Marry Health Infostructure with CC
Payment Infrastructure!

18. The Proposal
• Frame and articulate
• Hypotheses to be tested
• ROI to be calculated
• Engage partners in pilot project(s)
• Evaluate results, and ROI

19. Partners
• National
• Health Canada
• Canada Health Infoway
• Treasury Board

20. Partners
• Provincial Governments
• Regional Health Districts
• Health Care Providers & Vendors
• Change Management/Leadership

21. Contact
• Mark Szpakowski, szpak@eastlink.ca
• memer.com/blog/open-money-resources