The New York Times has pointed out a very interesting coincidence. It was during the presidency of Ronald Reagan that health costs and outcomes began to diverge from the rest of high income countries with which we compare ourselves. In an article by Austin Frakt, a healthcare economist, physicist and mathematician, he points out that America began to abandon healthcare cost controls, except for Medicare, when Ronald Reagan took the helm from Jimmy Carter, who had steadfastly backed limiting public and private healthcare spending. Deregulation of many institutions followed. Regulation of industries related to health were rolled back and new regulations which helped control spending in Europe were not introduced. In the early 1980's insurance companies began to change the way they paid hospitals for their services, introducing "DRG's (diagnosis related groups). Hospitals responded to this change in payment methods, being paid according to diagnosis rather than time or
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.