Resuscitating an Ailing Healthcare System by Belleh Fontem

Susan DeVore, President and CEO of the Premier Healthcare Alliance (a network of healthcare providers in the United States), started her talk by displaying some startling facts about the current state and history of healthcare in the United States. For over a decade, healthcare costs have been rising at one to two and a half percentage points faster than GDP growth despite failing to achieve commensurately positive matches in life expectancy and infant mortality. Going down a deeper level of granularity, she exposed the fastest area of spending growth, which is spending on chronic ailments (e.g., diabetes), and mentioned that the current objective of healthcare reform is to implement a mechanism of carrots and sticks to make it as painful as possible to remain on this track while generating incentives for healthcare providers to improve efficiency through innovation. Read More.