Archive for September 2007
Chronic Care Management and The Cost of Health Care
by Charles M. ArlinghausWe spend a lot of money as a society on perhaps the best health care system in the world. A less desirable way to reduce those costs is to ration care by one system or another. A better solution will focus on a growth strategy to improve health and eliminate complications by managing the chronic conditions and health risks that drive almost all the system costs.
Too much of the discussion of the increase in health care costs implicitly views consumers as unchanging commodities and tries to shift costs for a fixed set of events from one set of payers to another. But just as tax policy must consider the dynamic effects of economic growth and changing incentives, health policy too must have a dynamic, pro-growth (or pro-health) component.
