re: #254 Pianobuff

You might find this an interesting read, too. There’s even a section on Emanuel and Blumenthal.

Very good article. A couple of interesting points:

Walk into an electronics store and you will see an array of products that did not exist twenty years ago. The same is true in healthcare, another industry where growth is driven by innovation. Treatments for heart disease and strokes are as unlike care in the 1960s as the new flat screen televisions are unlike the black and white sets of five decades ago. If you had a heart attack in the 1980s and made it to the hospital alive, you still only had a 60 percent chance of surviving until the end of the year. Now your chance is over 90 percent. Your chance of surviving a stroke is more than twice as high as it was three decades ago.

Overall health spending could be reduced by 30 to 40 percent by settling for the standard of cure and symptom relief available to patients in 1960, but there is no demand for 1960s medicine at 1960s prices, say CBO researchers. Families dealing with incurable illnesses go to bed every night hoping the next day will bring a cure. The administration’s strategy of slowing new technology in order to restrain spending will make the wait for breakthroughs longer.