Four Ideas That Could Change America

New innovations burst onto the scene daily in the United States.  What once seemed impossible becomes reality in the blink of an eye. Thanks to new technologies, the country has undergone a metamorphosis that has altered the way we live, work and play in our lifetime.

But there is still room for innovation that can transform the nation. Here are four ideas that could save money, increase productivity, create jobs and add to the well-being of every citizen.  Amazingly, the technology required to implement these applications already exists in most cases.

1.  Solving the transportation crisis.  Many cities in the United States are gripped by gridlock as population growth has worsened traffic congestion.  Current public transportation systems are costly and inefficient, despite billions of dollars in expenditures at the local, state and federal levels.  Americans love their cars and are unwilling to give them up for a less than satisfactory experience with public transportation.  Some believe the solution is smart cars that drive themselves.  That may make the roads safer, but it does nothing to ease the burden of congestion.  The cost of traffic congestion was estimated at $121 billion in 2011, according to a study by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. The answer is not building more public transportation.  Every major system in the U.S. already requires massive government funding to underwrite the costs because user fees do not recoup the operational expense.  What the country needs is a superstructure transportation network that zips cars and their occupants along a conveyor-like system powered by nuclear energy.  Think people-movers on steroids. The network could be built along existing major highways and interstates or actually replace the paved road network.  Americans get to keep their cars.  Driving would be safer.  The expenditure for the superstructure could be partially funded from the savings in building new paved roads.  And electric cars would become more practical because the vehicles would only have to travel short distances to access the car transport system.

2.  Improving health care access while reducing costs. More than 90 percent of Americans visited a doctor at least once in the past 12 months, according to a Gallup Poll.  Every year the growth in physician office visits increases.  Each occurrence costs patients and their health insurance companies an average of $158, reports the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.  The expense for just this one health care episode is responsible for billions of dollars annually. Most office visits are for routine ailments with easily recognizable symptoms that could be diagnosed without driving to a physician's office.  However, doctors feel compelled to actually see a patient in person before subscribing any medications.  That can be solved with virtual doctors.  Smartphones equipped with cameras would allow a patient to have "face time" with a doctor without an actual office visit.  Patients would have the assurance of "seeing" a doctor. Physician groups and hospitals could hire and train doctors for the task, including sharpening their video skills as part of their instruction.  Appointments for the video sessions could be made online.  Insurance information would be collected in the online process.  Apps could be created to enhance the remote examination process.  Already, there are affordable devices that measure heart rate, pulse and body temperature.  Doctors could "see" more patients than they do today.  The cost of each session would be less than today's office visit because of the reduction in overhead.  But what about all those "poor" people without smartphones?  Virtually every American has at least one television in his or her household.  New televisions would come equipped with a two-way video feature.  Old sets could be retrofitted. Implementation would result in a gargantuan savings in health care costs while helping to relieve the looming doctor shortage.  It would also bring improved care to rural sections of the country where often patients must drive miles to find the nearest physician or forgo treatment.

3.  Fixing the country's water issues.  In 2012, the United States endured the most severe and extensive drought in at least 25 years, impacting 80 percent of the country's agricultural land.  Droughts shrink crops and livestock herds, raising retail food prices. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the cost of the drought two years ago was estimated as high as $50 billion.  Yet even in years of severe drought, some parts of the country are awash in floods.  The problem is that nothing currently exists to use excess water in one part of the nation to help another section suffering through a drought. Every city has water pipes transversing its landscape.  The flaw in the system is often the excess run-off is not stored, but simply allowed to seep back into the earth.  The country needs giant underground rainwater storage tanks and an interconnected network of pipes that pumps water throughout the United States.  Pipeline construction technology has advanced to the stage that it should be relatively easy to build and maintain the system.  If the country can distribute gas and electricity and telecommunications service via national grids, why not water?  The biggest obstacle would be the political in-fighting over which section of the country gets the excess water.  But surely the acute impact of droughts on every consumer would trump politics.

4.  Improving education by increasing innovation.  Total expenditures at the state and federal level for public elementary and secondary schools in the United States was $607.2 billion in fiscal 2009-2010, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That translates into about $12,473 annually for every student, one of the highest expenditures in the world.  Those dollars do not include more than $55 billion in annual capital outlays by schools for everything from new buildings to computers.  Yet for all this spending, American schools are failing.  Educators are spending too much time offering book knowledge, instead of focusing on developing each student's innovation skills and motivation to succeed. There is no competitive advantage for a country to have educated people, if they don't know what to do with all that knowledge and aren't encouraged to develop their curiosity and imagination. America needs to transition from a knowledge-driven educational system to an an innovation-driven model.  Achieving that goal would generate robust job growth and fuel an unprecedented economic boom. That requires a massive evolution in the way the country educates and rewards its students in the 21st century.  The emphasis needs to be on critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration and analysis, not on memorization of state capitals, math tables, chemical formulae and ancient poems.  One catalyst for change would be making the best teachers available to students throughout the nation, regardless of location.  This could be done with high speed digital links that connect classrooms equipped with computers with video conferencing capability.  In addition, this would facilitate collaboration between students from different cities, states and even other countries.  In today's global economy, it would promote a new kind of  teamwork required for tomorrow's leaders.  The additional cost would be minuscule when compared to the influx of more students better equipped to change the world after they leave school.

None of these ideas are far-fetched.  Each can be implemented using existing technology coupled with some additional innovation.  Money always rises as a hurdle, but this country spends trillions of dollars each year on a myriad of programs that are failing to improve the life of most Americans.

What the country needs is vision and courage.  Unfortunately, both are in extremely short supply.  However, that could change if a few determined leaders stepped forward with bold solutions supported by an informed citizenry demanding new solutions.