Can 2014 Be The Year Of Real Healthcare Innovation?

Monday, January 20, 2014 SPORK! 0 Comments

The issue of affordable, reasonable, pragmatic health care is the defining issue of our times.  In the U. S. in 1969, we spent about 5.0% of GDP on healthcare; today that number is closer to 18.0%. We spend at least half again as much per capita on health care as any other developed country, yet our health outcomes lag significantly behind those countries that spend less. Medical advances have allowed us to extend life, to treat illnesses that a generation ago would have been fatal, to keep the seriously ill alive longer.  But the result of that is that 50.0% of the population now  accounts for 97.0% of health care spending, while the other half accounts for 3.0%.   We spend nearly $3.0 trillion a year on health care, with the vast majority of that spending – as would seem obvious on reflection –  going to treat the chronically ill, the elderly, the frail.  Meanwhile, the young and healthy balk at paying into a system that benefits them disproportionately less.   Our under-performing, too-expensive health care system is the penalty we pay for deep,  extensive fragmentation, and a stunning, remarkable absence of organizational strategy.