These are the two best articles I've read on the issue. Both generate different diagnoses and plans of action, but an interpenetrating mediation of the two seems possible and beneficial. At an intellectual level, health care is a genuinely challenging policy conundrum. By the way, both articles were recommended by David Brooks.
This offers a well-analyzed reform plan.
This one is written by a practicing physician who set out the determine why some parts of the country spend 3 times as much on health care as other parts--and, no, the difference had nothing to do with cost of living differentials. The conclusion is encouraging in some ways (in that costs can be reduced about 30% without systemic changes and without loss of quality). What is depressing here is that those cost cuts would come from doctors studiously ignoring the costs of care (in the context of a quasi-socialist organizational structure)! The author found that current high cost parts of the system are those that attend most closely to this cost with purpose to increase it for their own profit. It seems that it may be too much to hope for a system that is cost aware with the intent of controlling costs improving quality.
No comments:
Post a Comment