The latest issue of Money discusses that topic, including an interview with Dartmouth researcher Elliott Fisher that features the following exchange:
How do you know the spending isn’t making people healthier?
Survival following a heart attack or a hip fracture, or after a diagnosis of colon cancer, is no better in the higher-spending regions than in the lower-spending ones. More health care doesn’t necessarily mean better health are. In fact, mortality rates in higher-paying regions are actually a little bit higher. Hospitals are dangerous places to be if you don’t need to be there.
This assessment reminds me of Regina Herzlinger‘s comment to Carolina Journal Radio:
[O]ur health-care costs make us globally uncompetitive. We spend 17 percent of GDP [gross domestic product] on health care. Countries with whom we compete spend 10 percent. We cannot point to quality excesses in our health-care system that would justify the enormously higher amount that we spend.
Follow the link above to learn why Herzlinger believes consumer-driven health care offers the answer to the problem.
