E.J. “Ned” Holland
Who:
E. J. “Ned” Holland, 63, senior vice president of human resources for EMBARQ, a major telecommunications company headquartered in Overland Park.
Bio:
Holland is a member of the
Kansas Health Policy Authority
board.
Well-known for his outspokenness, Holland is convinced the nation is “inexorably” headed toward a national, single-payer health care system. “It”s just a matter of time,” he said.
Holland half-joked that he”s not opposed to amending Medicare by “simply taking out the number 65. Pretty simple.”
He questions the role of insurance companies in achieving meaningful health reform. “Insurers are just resellers, they add no value,” he said. “When you”re big enough
like we were at Payless Cashways and Sprint (former employers) and like we are at EMBARQ
you don”t need them. Here at EMBARQ we buy direct from doctors and hospitals, we have contracts with doctors groups and we have contracts hospital groups. We don”t buy through an insurance company. So we cut out the middleman, cut out their profit and their margin and we return it to our beneficiaries who, in this case, are our 20,000-or-so employees.”
Kansas, he said, can do the same thing. “The State of Kansas is bigger than EMBARQ, bigger than Sprint. And if we”re actually going to buy health care for all Kansans, the State of Kansas is plenty big enough to do that.”
Holland praised the health policy authority”s first-year efforts, marveling at how the board”s nine voting members have managed to check their “histories at the door, sit at the table and expressed views that don”t necessarily reflect some constituencies they might be seen as representing. That was the idea, I think
to try to find solutions within a non-political context.”
In many ways, he said, health reform defies political solution. “The problem with legislation is that it”s made like sausage. You get a little bit of one (policy) and a little bit of another,” Holland said. “And then I hear, “Well, we took the best of both.” Well, the trouble with the “best of both” is that if one goes left and one goes right, you really don”t go anywhere.”
History is loaded with reform efforts that have collapsed under their own weight. There”s no better example, he said, than the Clinton administration”s failed push for universal health care in 1993-4. “I”m one of a very few people who actually saw a copy of the (proposed) statute,” Holland said. “It was 1,300 pages. It was impossible to read, way too complicated. Every special interest group wanted their bauble hung on the Christmas tree. You can”t do that and come up with coherent policy.”
Holland said Americans spend way too much on health care. “We spend more per capita
and a higher percentage of our gross domestic product
on health care than any other country in the history of the world. And the next closest country spends about half of what we do,” he said. “And yet our outcomes put us worse than 30th in the world in terms of performance, things like infant mortality and low birth-weight babies. The big picture is just appalling.”
Holland cited a recent RAND Corp. study that found that Americans get the health care they need about 55 percent of the time. “You know what?” he said. “The airlines deliver baggage better than that! We”re spending way too much money on things that don”t produce results. We need to stop doing stuff we don”t need to do.”
Physicians, too, are part of the problem. “In no other society does the medical profession make as much money
compared with the rest of the population
as it does here.”
Holland grew up in Prairie Village. He attended St. John”s Seminary in Kansas City, Mo., and St. Thomas Seminary in Denver. “I spent five and half years in seminary
from the time I was 14 until I was almost 20,” he said.
He later graduated from Rockhurst College with a degree in philosophy, followed by a law degree from Boston College. He joined Spencer Fane Britt ‘ Browne, a Kansas City law firm, in 1968. He practiced health law for 24 years. He left the firm to become senior vice president for administration at Payless Cashways, a building supply retailer.
“The company was already in financial difficulty when I got there,” Holland said. He presided over the Payless Cashways” Chapter 11 bankruptcy. “By that time I was both the chief human resources officer and the chief legal officer.”
Holland joined Sprint in 1999. After the company”s merger with Nextel, its local division was “spun off,” creating EMBARQ. “We have 20,000 employees, give or take a few, in 40 states and we operate subsidiaries in 18 states.”
As EMBARQ”s senior vice president for human relations, Holland said he spends between $125 million and $150 million a year on health care. “We”re modest spenders,” he said.
Interconnects:
Holland spent 32 years on the Truman Medical Center board of directors, including a stint as chairman. He is a past chairman of and general counsel for the Kansas City Area Hospital Association, which later merged with the Kansas Hospital Association. He has served a three-year term on the Children”s Mercy Hospital board” 15 years on the hospital”s finance committee. He lives in Missouri.
Contact:
Telephone:
(913) 345-7999
Fax: (913) 523-2886
Address: 5454 West 110th Street, Overland Park, KS 66211
Email:
ned.holland@embarq.com