This is an excerpt from the New York Times December 4, 2011. If you read this blog regularly, you have heard it all before, but the truth repeated is good. More and more expensive health care does not mean better health care.
WASHINGTON — The official in charge of Medicare and Medicaid for the last 17 months says that 20 percent to 30 percent of health spending is “waste” that yields no benefit to patients, and that some of the needless spending is a result of onerous, archaic regulations enforced by his agency.
The official, Dr. Donald M. Berwick, listed five reasons for what he described as the “extremely high level of waste.” They are overtreatment of patients, the failure to coordinate care, the administrative complexity of the health care system, burdensome rules and fraud.
“Much is done that does not help patients at all,” Dr. Berwick said, “and many physicians know it.”
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