Listen Up

Monday, February 16, 2015

Another View of American Health Care by Uwe Reinhardt, PhD

We published an article yesterday (February 14, 2015) which included a link to the Affordable Care Act. This was not meant to be an endorsement.  I have focused on the pitfalls, inadequacy of the ACA and, the outright sabotage of our health system, rather than improving and reducing cost.  Despite the stated goals of  HHS, and CMS to slow down health cost escalation and reduce cost, the ACA increases bureaucracy ad overhead.

Uwe Rheinhardt, PhD has been a whistleblower on the  U.S. health scene.  He minces no words. Does anyone listen, or this just wishful thinking ?  Healthcare is not is only area of study.  He has taught courses in economic theory and policy, accounting, and health economics and policy. Reinhardt's scholarly work has focused on economics and policy and includes more far-reaching topics such as cost-benefit analyses of the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar[5] and the Space Shuttle.[citation needed] He currently is the professor of Economics 100 and Economics 332 at Princeton University.

Research

Reinhardt's most recent[when?] research has focused on hospital pricing, systems of health care around the world, Medicarereform, and health care spending. His work has appeared in Health Affairs, The New England Journal of MedicineJAMA, and The British Medical Journal.[6]

Administration[edit]

In the 2009 Frontline show "Sick in America", Reinhardt criticized the United States for spending 24% of every health care dollar on administration, and pointed out that Canada spends less than half of the U.S. amount and Taiwan spends significantly less than Canada.[10] Reinhardt faulted the seeming U.S. preference for an unwieldy "mishmash of private insurance plans" for the inefficiency.[10] He said if the U.S. could spend half as much on administration, it would save more than enough money to cover all the uninsured.

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