The US spends roughly double what any other high income nation spends on health care delivery, yet its outcomes are usually almost 40% worse. And, it is a fact that there is essentially no preventative care for the lowest one fifth, measured on an annual income basis: they in the main, have little choice but to only seek care in the ERs, and thus only when they are acutely ill. That explains much of the disparity.
These same patient cases account for the bulk of the over-spend in health care. That is not their fault, of course -- it is a system wide "feature". In fact just five per cent of the US population accounts for half of all health care spend, year after year.
Yes. That's a broken model -- tangled and broken. So, Amazon will face entrenched interests that benefit from this dislocation. Do go read the entire article -- as it is nuanced, and based in reality (the author is a former Obama administration IT/health maven):
. . .Amazon also faces competition from the likes of United’s Optum and the combined CVS Health and Aetna, which have the advantage of providing both insurance and health care services and which already employ physicians and other providers at scale. Their existing presence in local markets, data on hospital and specialist prices and utilization, and experience with managing risk put them well ahead of Amazon, which is just dipping its toe into health care delivery. . . .
Yep. Now you know -- down to the last two days with my tri-athlete / doctoral grad student at home. . . smiling a sort of sad smile. . . rooftop dining tonight, though. So it is well. . . with my soul. The trip to the Big Apple looked. . . like a ton of fun. But no "Wicked"? That's for you, as mom, right -- this fall?
नमस्ते
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