Gawande has a great article in New Yorker on health care costs
Annals of Medicine: The Cost Conundrum: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
As one of my mentors said - despite what we think, physicians are finely tuned economic machines.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
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Agreed that this is a good article. What I find interesting is that in his last New Yorker article, Gawande argues for incrementalism in healthcare reform, suggesting that HC systems are the way they are for good reasons.
ReplyDeleteIn this article, he implicates the current payment system as a cause for high HC costs, and suggests that payment reform is needed. The solution that he strongly hints at is anything but incremental: capitating MDs and creating accountable care groups. This is similar to what the MA health care commission recently suggested. It makes sense in theory, but operationalizing this change is going to really really hard. On the other hand, trying to do it may keep all of us employed for the next 30 years!