The Great Health Care Bailout

Jan. 14, 2009— -- "Bailout" conjures up an act of desperation to keep a sinking boat afloat. For our financial system, we're all wondering if "bailout" is plugging holes in the hull or just throwing good money after bad.

In "reforming" our sinking health care system, we need assurance up front that we're not paying for a similar bailout in disguise.

There is no argument that the United States supports the most irrational health care system on the planet. By 2006 we were spending almost $7,000 per capita. That's about twice what was spent in Australia, Canada, Germany, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, or the United Kingdom, and it is more than twice that spent in Japan.

However, by any measure of health, all these countries are buying much more bang for the buck. The American health care system is more than irrational; it's an indefensible travesty.

There is no argument as to the inadequacies of the organization of the American health care system. It is inefficient, uneven in quality, inequitable in distribution and overpriced. Most of this has become painfully obvious to all of us, except maybe the overpricing. For example, for comparable drugs, the price per pill in the U.S. is 50 percent higher than in EU countries.

Furthermore, the U.S. system is inefficient, uneven, inequitable and overpriced despite the fact that we are pouring money into its administration. By 2006 we were spending about $450 per capita to administer our system; no other country came close. France got away with $250 per capita, Canada $150 per capita, and Denmark, Finland and South Korea were under $100 per capita.

There is no argument that the administration and administrative structure of the American health care system need to be brought to heel. The rallying cry of the leading health care reformists is to render delivery of health care efficient, equitable, and higher in quality -- and to do so before the current system leaves us even less well and less well off. Single payer, standardization of care, electronic medical records, pay for performance, and a tweaking of the pricing structure are in our future.