Via TIME’s Karen Tumulty, Atul Gawande looks hard at why health care costs so much more in McAllen Texas, and, writes Tumulty, “why more health care isn’t the same as better health care.”
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When you look across the spectrum from Grand Junction to McAllen—and the almost threefold difference in the costs of care—you come to realize that we are witnessing a battle for the soul of American medicine. Somewhere in the United States at this moment, a patient with chest pain, or a tumor, or a cough is seeing a doctor. And the damning question we have to ask is whether the doctor is set up to meet the needs of the patient, first and foremost, or to maximize revenue.
There is no insurance system that will make the two aims match perfectly. But having a system that does so much to misalign them has proved disastrous. As economists have often pointed out, we pay doctors for quantity, not quality. As they point out less often, we also pay them as individuals, rather than as members of a team working together for their patients. Both practices have made for serious problems.
Certainly read the whole thing at THE NEW YORKER.
—DAYO OLOPADE
Covers the White House and Washington for The Root. Follow her on Twitter.
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