Who Killed Health Care?: America's $2 Trillion Medical Problem - and the Consumer-Driven Cure

Herzlinger, a real expert on health economics who is a professor at Harvard Business School, has written an eloquent and passionate book. It strongly advocates bringing the consumer (patient) and the doctor back into the center of medical decision-making, and this core idea is correct. The central challenge is to restore true "free markets" with all their advantages into the field of health care. The author proposes specific ways to do this, and I agree with most of them.The most crucial issue is to make health insurance personally obtainable and tax-deductible and also always portable. The consumer should own the policy and pay for it, just like automobile insurance. (Down the road, it may be possible to imagine "capping" the tax-deductible element, which obviously still distorts the apparent price of health care to consumers compared to all other non-tax-deductible goods and services.) This should be coupled with requirements that everyone purchase health insurance of at least a high-deductible, catastrophic coverage type. Public funds should be provided, based on means testing, to assist poor people with obtaining such insurance. Employers would be out of the business of providing health care for workers, who would then receive more in direct pay to use to purchase their own chosen health insurance.That is really the heart of the matter. But many with vested interests in the current system are opposed to such a common sense, market-based solution. Opponents include many academicians and experts who would lose power in a free market system, editorially-biased professional publications like the New England Journal of Medicine, general hospitals, managed care organizations, and others who work the current system to their advantage and lobby aggressively to maintain it. And of course there are some who are foolish enough to imagine that American health care can be made better by nationalizing it - which would be a complete disaster leading to rationing for patients, retardation of development of new drugs and medical technologies, and government control of a huge piece of the U.S. economy.I disagree with one recommendation in the book which suggests creating a new government agency patterned after the SEC for mandating information dispersion in healthcare. I feel that should be left to free markets to work out, backed by our already existing laws against fraud. To the extent that consumers want certain information, it will be provided by smart businesses of all types, including doctors and health care facilities; organizations who are unresponsive will face economic penalties, while those who act in the way consumers really want will achieve competitive advantages in the marketplace. The internet, email, and other modern forms of communication ensure that people can ask for and get health care and other information with unprecedented ease.In summary, Professor Herzlinger's book is based on sound principles, offers many good ideas, and is of great importance. It should be read by everyone who cares about the future of America's health.

Not provided in an easy enough flow of information to maintain most people's attention in its entirety, but hits the center of the target of where the actual downfall of healthcare is originating and why the current political and business "status quo" will not accomplish improvement toward the offer and receipt of real LIFE SAVING health support.

Jack Morgan was a great guy and when he died, a lot of people mourned him. He could have lived another 20 years, but he died because of an inept, malfunctioning, costly healthcare system. Jack thought this system was protecting him, but it killed him.The hospitals, employers, managed care insurers, the Congress and executive branch, and health policy academics, all conspired, according to Dr. Regina Herzlinger, Harvard Business School Professor and accomplished author, to kill Jack and hundreds of thousands others, and to make enormous profits in the process.Her solution? Consumer-driven healthcare, more or less following the Swiss model. It would enable innovators who have great ideas about how to get more value for the money to enter the space and allow providers compete for Jack's business. It would encourage multiple revolutionary innovations in the supply of health care and result in significantly better and less expensive service.A truly innovative approach for radical improvement that can be accomplished incrementally and tremendously benefit all of us. Read it and think about wonderful possibilities!Yuval Lirov, Practicing Profitability - Billing Network Effect for Revenue Cycle Control in Healthcare Clinics and Chiropractic Offices: Collections, Audit Risk, SOAP Notes, Scheduling, Care Plans, and Coding