I recently made a 3 1/2 week trip to southeast Asia- Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, where most of the population is poor yet have a Buddhist view of life. Most of the people have very little in the way of resources for any of what the average American would call the necessities of life- including widely accessible, generally good quality health care yet are pretty content with their lives.
Coming back to the US, I diagnosed America with "expectation dysphoria". We expect way more than our society can reasonably provide at a cost that's not sustainable so we are nearly always unhappy and unfulfilled in so many areas of our lives.
We can do better with our health care system and I fully expect the next 5 -10 years will (a) bring transformational changes derived from rapid advances in big data and AI approaches to care, (a) embed technology innovation and common sense to improve the patient and provider experience and (c) adopt a more rationale approach to financing health care.
Until then, we need to understand where we are failing, improve care for the underserved and address the frustrations so many Americans feel.
I'll end with a link to the famous and prescient line from the 1970s movie Network that feels like it represents our current national mood.
"I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore"
Thanks Jeff. Excellent interview with Aaron Carroll of Academy Health on Tradeoffs yesterday which points out that we can be angry at health plans -but the underlying problem is that we are paying too much for each unit of service - and so we either need to tolerate much higher health care costs or we need to work on lowering utilization.
There was a similar movie moment of anger at health plans in "As Good as it Gets" in 1997. I'd say that we have made way too little progress in the more than a quarter century since that film.
I appreciate your optimism about the positive changes in the next 5-10 years, and hope you're right!
I recently made a 3 1/2 week trip to southeast Asia- Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, where most of the population is poor yet have a Buddhist view of life. Most of the people have very little in the way of resources for any of what the average American would call the necessities of life- including widely accessible, generally good quality health care yet are pretty content with their lives.
Coming back to the US, I diagnosed America with "expectation dysphoria". We expect way more than our society can reasonably provide at a cost that's not sustainable so we are nearly always unhappy and unfulfilled in so many areas of our lives.
We can do better with our health care system and I fully expect the next 5 -10 years will (a) bring transformational changes derived from rapid advances in big data and AI approaches to care, (a) embed technology innovation and common sense to improve the patient and provider experience and (c) adopt a more rationale approach to financing health care.
Until then, we need to understand where we are failing, improve care for the underserved and address the frustrations so many Americans feel.
I'll end with a link to the famous and prescient line from the 1970s movie Network that feels like it represents our current national mood.
"I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RujOFCHsxo&list=FLemKyHSXAYHI3aIrve48xSg
But anger and frustration is never an excuse for violence!
Thanks Jeff. Excellent interview with Aaron Carroll of Academy Health on Tradeoffs yesterday which points out that we can be angry at health plans -but the underlying problem is that we are paying too much for each unit of service - and so we either need to tolerate much higher health care costs or we need to work on lowering utilization.
https://tradeoffs.org/2024/12/12/health-insurer-blame-aaron-carroll/
There was a similar movie moment of anger at health plans in "As Good as it Gets" in 1997. I'd say that we have made way too little progress in the more than a quarter century since that film.
I appreciate your optimism about the positive changes in the next 5-10 years, and hope you're right!
Thanks!