Two things caught my eye today, both related to our broken health care system. The first is a absolutely FANTASTIC piece by Atul Gawande in the New Yorker about one of the biggest problems with our health care system that very few people talk about: that our current system rewards quantity without any control for quality. That is, that doctors make more money for piling on tests and procedures, when there is evidence that shows that not only does that not help the patients get better, but can actually do more harm than good. He examines a case of a small town in Texas that charges Medicare almost twice the national average per subscriber, and investigates why. He makes the very valid point that for all the talk of insurance companies, and single-payer, and the public option, this contradiction at the heart of our current health care reimbursement system needs to be addressed for a real breakthrough in controlling costs. Just a great piece, and one that needs to be read by everyone.
And now the second thing that caught my eye. Over at Think Progress, Matthew Yglesias has a great post about how our current health care system limits the amount of innovation and entrepreneurship in our current economy. He writes:
The thinking is that our current system unduly punishes risk-taking. There are a lot of different aspects of this, but basically the American health care system both produces labor market rigidities (”job lock”) and makes jobs at small firms relatively unattractive.
He goes on to quote a study which codifies the negative impact that this system of employer-tied health care has on entrepreneurship. Speaking personally, I know that my fear of being without health care has really dimmed any thoughts I might have had about changing fields or changing jobs, and it is even more of an issue now, when any of us might lose our jobs in an instant due to the current economic crisis (thanks, W.!).