Capitalism

Recently Noted – Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Team Up to Try to Disrupt Health Care

Recently Noted – Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Team Up to Try to Disrupt Health Care

January 31, 2018

These corporate giants are “disrupting” healthcare or so the headlines say. Despite the media flurry we should not expect much. The structure of US healthcare defies little nibbles at the periphery. As noted many times here, we need to look to our developed country competitors for their proven approaches to how to set up a world-class healthcare system at world standard costs.


Healthcare

The Democratic Party and Healthcare – Preserving Obamacare Cannot Be The End Game

The Democratic Party and Healthcare – Preserving Obamacare Cannot Be The End Game

June 24, 2017

The Democratic Party must absorb the reality of our situation. We need to develop and express some outrage at the current healthcare providers. None of this will happen as long as Democrats are taking money from the rich and corporations. If there is a single lesson from the Bernie Sanders campaign it is that with messages and programs that reflect the needs of the vast majority of Americans, you can raise enough money to fight off the Republican Party and its wealthy and corporate sponsors. Time to start now.


Capitalism

Naive Talk about Healthcare from Adam Davidson in the New Yorker

Naive Talk about Healthcare from Adam Davidson in the New Yorker

May 25, 2017

The solution to our healthcare problems cannot be clearer. Look at Canada, Germany, France, Japan, Australia, Netherlands, UK, Denmark, Sweden, and others. Plenty of healthcare systems with decades of operational experience producing much better outcomes for very single person in these countries at less than half the cost!!


Books

NYTimes Book Review Misses Major Points About US Healthcare

NYTimes Book Review Misses Major Points About US Healthcare

April 5, 2017

Using a variety of tools and institutional arrangements every other developed country controls prices and healthcare budgets. They do not allow a one-sided market to focus on delivering as many procedures and prescriptions as possible without any systematic focus on health. To put the outrage of American healthcare in its true global setting: US healthcare spending compared to other developed countries and health outcomes relative to other developed countries. As the chart below demonstrates, the US spends more than 25% more than our closest competitor, Switzerland, and twice as much as most including japan, France, Australia and Canada. The health outcomes are woeful. We rank 42 in the world for longevity and 56th for infant mortality.