Is Health Care Making You Better—or Dead? — HBS Working Knowledge

Is Health Care Making You Better—or Dead? — HBS Working Knowledge: "The solution I will discuss here goes by the name consumer-driven health care. It's a term that I popularized, and it's become a common way to describe this new health care solution. Google it and see for yourself. Consumer-driven health care empowers individuals and brings their force to bear on the offerings of doctors, hospitals, and insurance and pharmaceutical companies. It converts the entire system to one that is responsive to you and me as the ultimate consumers of its goods and services. As I will show in the course of the book, there are consumer-driven health insurers that give you the health care you need at a price you are willing to pay; there are lower-cost hospitals that do not treat you like a slab of meat; and there are governments that do what they are supposed to—help the poor, provide transparency, and protect against fraud and abuse—rather than telling your doctor how to practice medicine. There is a way to create dynamic markets for health services that are more effective, more efficient, and more responsive to the patient-consumer—and her doctor—than anything we have today. The last chapters are devoted to describing that system, how to make it work, the proper roles of government and business in creating and sustaining it, and the benefits and good health it will bring to"