Last night I attended a program put on by the hospital about health care reform. The first speaker had clearly spent a great deal of personal time and energy working with folks who really didn't want the health care reform bill to pass. He had a good ole boy presentation style, peppered with sarcasm and full of predictions of imminent doom for the world as we now know it. The only saving graces for his talk were that the food was excellent and that he used so much insurance and benefits jargon that the majority of the audience quit listening to him. The second guy was more balanced. He identified himself as a moderate republican, and though he didn't particularly like the health care bill as a whole, he presented a pretty balanced review, and looked at ways we could allow it to improve health care. His major points included the fact that "accountable care organizations" (ACOs) are likely to become a dominant way to deliver health care, with their foc
The cost of health care in the US is higher than anywhere else in the world, and yet we are not healthier than our peer nations. In fact, in terms of such measures as infant mortality and life span, we don't measure up. Why is this? Many people involved in providing or receiving care have some pretty good ideas about what costs so much, and what we can do to reduce costs and improve quality. Sharing these stories is an important step in creating affordable universal health care.