Titanic

The New York Times ran a story describing the discovery that the shipbuilder of the Titanic struggled for years to obtain enough good rivets and riveters and ultimately settled on faulty materials that doomed the ship, which sank 96 years ago Tuesday.

The selection of the rivets has been a subject of interest. Great ships like Titanic require three million rivets that acted like glue to hold everything together. In the case of Titanic’s rivets, the builder company ordered No. 3 bar, known as "best" — not No. 4, known as "best-best." Buying the No. 4 bars cost a lot more for the shipbuilders, but the cost of getting the selection wrong turned out to be much greater.

The pages of history are replete with examples of Titanic story. Even though we have had almost one century to learn the lesson of Titanic — on which more than 1,500 people died — the recurring theme of Titanic every now and then was almost a textbook example of how we humans keep on repeating the errors. The sinking of Titanic reminds me of an all-too-common condition of osteoporosis, or thinning of the bones secondary to aging. This devastating disease breaks the bone and renders a poor old lady in great pain – not to mention the healthcare costs of broken hip. Anyone of your granny who has been faithfully taking calcium supplements in hopes of staving off osteoporosis can be forgiven for being confused by our healthcare structure. In the public health sector, you simply have no access to measurement of the bone density – not to mention the "No. 4 bar" drugs that have been well proven to tackle osteoporosis.

Did I hear the word "shame"? Is it a shame to close our eyes and pray that the bones will stay fine but not fall apart like the Titanic? That question sounds difficult for our healthcare finance boss to grasp.