Why US Healthcare is so Expensive: Measuring the Wrong Thing

"Whatever you measure, will improve".   In the case of Healthcare, reimbursements by procedure and office visits are measured, so they have increased 10x since 1960.    However the patients are not getting better.

As the Washington Post points out:

Of 37 industrialized nations, the United States ranks 29th in infant mortality and among the world's worst on measures such as obesity, heart disease and preventable deaths.

Bright young physicians trained at prestigious and expensive universities enter a profession built on perverse financial rewards. They, like assembly-line workers of the past, are paid on a piecemeal basis, earning more money not by doing better but simply by doing more.

Yet more care rarely translates into better health.

So pay more attention to measuring the outcome you want and don't fall into the trap of emphasizing false indicators just because they are easy.     

Comments

[Misa]

Good information, I don't know that healthcare have increased 10x since 1960.
Thanks...