Big Med: Megaproviders and the High Cost of Health Care in America

"Comprehensive . . . . anyone with a serious interest in the prices of U.S. healthcare will want to have this rigorous and timely treatment." ―Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics There is little debate that health care in the United States is in need of reform. But where should those improvements begin? With insurers? Drug makers? The doctors themselves? In Big Med, David Dranove and Lawton Robert Burns argue that we're overlooking the most ubiquitous cause of our underperforming system: megaproviders, the expansive health care organizations that have become the face of American medicine. Drawing on decades of combined expertise in health care consolidation, Dranove and Burns trace Big Med's emergence in the 1990s, followed by its swift rise amid false promises of scale economies and organizational collaboration. In the decades since, megaproviders have gobbled up market share and turned independent physicians into salaried employees of big bureaucracies, while delivering on none of their early promises. For patients this means higher costs and lesser care. Meanwhile, physicians report increasingly low morale, making it all but impossible for most systems to implement meaningful reforms. Big Med is an essential read for understanding the current state of the health care system in America—and the steps urgently needed to create an environment of better care for all of us. "Incorporating tough-minded analysis with powerful rhetoric, this book describes why the US healthcare delivery system fails us, why mergers are unlikely to help, and what industry and policy leaders can do to turn things around." —Leemore Dafny, Harvard Business School

© 2024 The University of Chicago Press (E-bog): 9780226756844

Udgivelsesdato

E-bog: 31. maj 2024