Peak Oil Task Force Report - City of Bloomington - State of Indiana

VULNERABILITIES
Until now, health care in the United States has been primarily a private concern that has
evolved in an era of cheap energy. It has been predicated on the
assumption that specialized equipment and teams of highly‐skilled
professionals are the critical elements in health care. While this model
of health‐care delivery is superb at dealing with trauma, it is less well‐
suited to dealing with the environmentally‐induced or diet‐based
degenerative illnesses that have become so common.
Medical care in the U.S. today is among the most energy‐dependent sectors of the economy.
Costs are spiraling out of control and have contributed significantly to the nation's
economic dilemmas. High cost care is not necessarily high quality care. The World Health
Organization ranks the U.S. 37 th among nations in quality of health care. 245 Already
excessively dependent on emergency interventions at high cost, the system is likely to lurch
further toward poor care as energy‐based economic contraction leads people to avoid
timely and preventive care. A rise in the number of uninsured people poses potential
financial burdens. Of course, rising energy costs and shortages of energy‐intensive supplies,
plus fuel cost and supply problems related to patient and employee access to services
threaten to push the system out of control.
Bloomington Hospital is a major employer of people from throughout the region and serves
10 Indiana counties. The hospital is situated in Bloomington’s downtown and is served by
Bloomington Transit (BT). The hospital has recently merged with a large Indianapolis‐
based group of hospitals and has plans to relocate outside of the City's corporate boundary
– ostensibly to better serve the wider region by emphasizing ease of commuting by
highway. BT is limited to operations within the City’s corporate limits. If the hospital were
to relocate out of the city center it would make services less accessible to those unable to
drive, a portion of the public certain to rise substantially over the next decade.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
245
WHO World Health Report 2000 ­­­ Health Systems, Improving Performance,
http://www.who.int/whr/2000/en/index.html; http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html
The United States was ranked behind nations like San Marino, Andorra, Malta, Singapore, Oman, Iceland, Luxembourg,
Netherlands, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Chile, Dominica, Morocco, Cyprus, and Costa Rica.
Report of the Bloomington Peak Oil Task Force 207