Philip Clarke and Nicholas Graves want to know Who gets a piece of the pie? Spending the health budget fairly. I ask
So, Philip & Nicholas, why is the concept of cross-subsidisation in health care so difficult? Wouldn’t it be possible to insert clauses in contracts for high-tech cures so that the successful corporations are encouraged to pay back into preventive measures? For example, proposals from bidders for supply of lower limb prostheses to public hospitals would have to include programs that keep children on good diets. Is that sort of thing worthy of research?
Then Ben Bernanke gives a speech (pdf) in which he refers to Health IT.
Consider, for example, the potential for IT and biotechnology to improve health care, one of the largest and most important sectors of our economy. A strong case can be made that the modernization of health-care IT systems would lead to better-coordinated, more effective, and less costly patient care than we have today, including greater responsiveness of medical practice to the latest research findings.
Bernanke refers to U.S. Productivity Growth: An Optimistic Perspective (PDF) in International Productivity Monitor, Number 25.
Productivity growth in health care has traditionally been stymied by poor regulation, institutional inertia and perverse incentives. Cost of treatment, the high cost and risk of malpractice litigation on care-givers and the cost-plus nature of Medicare payments work together to make health care costly and slow to innovate.
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Transparency in delivery systems: Ease of connectivity and an expectation of openness between patients and providers is driving pricing transparency. Increased usage of self-diagnosis through online resources and social media is shifting some power towards patients.
As for transparency, ProPublica’s Hazardous Hospitals cites an example of a Total Knee Replacement with complications. The narrative states TKR is the commonest elective procedure in the US. One of the major predisposing factors for OA of knee is obesity.
Who knows how many TKRs are done in Australia?
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