The definition of an "economist?"

"Someone who sees something that works in practice and tries to determine whether it will work in theory."—JD Kleinke

 

 

apropos,

I am reminded of an old Jay Leno Tonight Show joke, wherein he sarcastically mocked mindless TV ad copy platitudes:

"Do you want the highest quality at the lowest price?"

"NO, we wanna pay top dollar for crap!"

I've riffed on the U.S. healthcare system at some length across the years. See also my Hahnemann debacle post.

 

From the above Healthcare Triage video:

 

 

OK, 71% of health care economists have apparently not gotten The Memo. **

(** Wait a minute. The v/o contradicts the slide. Which is it? Favored or opposed?)

I am now 75 and a Medicare bene, as is my 71 yr old wife. We hit the Medicare "high income earners" threshold several years ago, approximately doubling our monthly "Medicare Premium Deduction" (it has since gone back down to "normal"). Cheryl was still working, and we'd taken a couple of sizable IRA disbursements (which count as taxable "earned" income in the year withdrawn). So, some significant "means testing" is already in effect. Not that hard-liners don't still want to convert Medicare into a flat-out penurious welfare program, with "asset" limits as well as income ceilings. Spend-down-to-poverty-for-eligibility.

 

"Netherlands, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Canada?" Higher-performing, lower costs? Buncha Commies.

No, we'll stick with Paying Top Dollar For Crap.

 

I first came to the healthcare space in 1993, as a QIO analyst, just as the corporatization of the sector was getting up to warp speed.

 

 

Interesting. This blog ensued during my 2nd QIO tenure in Health Information Technology. We were gonna materially improve outcomes quality and "bend the cost curve," in large measure via the widespread deployment of digital IT.

 

We mostly just MBA-ified it. 

MORE HEALTHCARE TRIAGE

  

I often reflect on what I wrote in 2009, when "Obamacare" was in the legislative oven.

Some reform advocates have long argued that we can indeed [1] extend health care coverage to all citizens, with [2] significantly increased quality of care, while at the same time [3] significantly reducing the national (and individual) cost. A trifecta "Win-Win-Win." Others find the very notion preposterous on its face. In the summer of 2009, this policy battle is now joined in full fury…

THE U.S. "HEALTH CARE" "SYSTEM"?

I will by no means be the first to note that our medical industry is not really a "system," nor is it predominantly about "health care." It is more aptly described as a patchwork post hoc disease and injury management and remediation enterprise, one that is more or less "systematic" in any true sense only at the clinical level. Beyond that it comprises a confounding perplex of endlessly contending for-profit and not-for-profit entities acting far too often at ruinously expensive cross-purposes…

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