Futurist Ian Morrison writes:
The prevailing vision of quality in American healthcare is “Pimp My Ride”. We take a really bad chassis and engine and bolt on unbelievable amounts of high technology on a frame that is tired, old and ineffective. We spend extravagantly on buildings, machines, drugs, devices, and people at West Coast Custom Healthcare. The people who own the rides are very grateful because they don’t have to pay for it in a high deductible catastrophic coverage world, once you are over your deductible and ensconced in an American hospital the sky’s the limit. It all looks great, has a fantastic sound system, and nice seats but it will break down if you try and drive it anywhere.
It seems to me that when we lose sight of health outcomes, many of us in the healthcare industry are in the unfortunate position of being accused of marketing a rather tawdry product. But since it’s so hard for the public to see what’s behind the curtain or under the medical hood, it is easy to understand why we settle for slogans and corporate conspiracies to explain problems — both of which do a tremendous injustice to providing insight into the reality of the healthcare system. It’s all about transparency and value. We still don’t get it.
March 26, 2008 at 7:21 am
[...] is facing the dilemma that we continue to point to again and again, namely, that any expansion of coverage has to be integrated with serious efforts to confront the [...]