Chasing the Rabbit: Official Blog by Author Steven Spear

The NY Times perpetuates a counterproductive falsehood, that better care for more people will be more costly (”Paying for Universal Health Coverage,” NY Times, June 6, 2009).  This isn’t true but claiming so only confuses the policy choices we have to make.  The assertion of more care for more cost is based on the often repeated by disproven assumption that resources are spent with optimal efficiency and effectiveness.  They are not.  Everyday there are trivial and catastrophic costs–human and financial–from the haphazardness by which care is delivered–each speciality operating as if in isolation–coming together by chance or by the diligent but often inadequate efforts of patients and families.

This need not be.  Pioneering providers have shown that well coordinated care is not only safer, not causing harm, it is less costly.

The Times would do itself, its readers, and society a great service by changing its advocacy from more care at greater cost to more care at less cost and by insisting that reform reward those who combine great care, for many patients, at lower cost and punish those who drive up costs and drive down quality.

Related posts:

1. Spend more to get more? Not necessarily in health care
2. Provider Competition Key to Health Care Reform
3. Measuring Value-Added, not Compliance, Key to Health Care Reform
4. Spear on Bloomberg: What’s health care reform missing? Quality!
5. Theory and Evidence for Repairing Health Care Markets So Markets Can Repair Health Care Delivery…