Thursday, September 25, 2008

Will Primary Care Be Re-Empowered by an Ailing Economy?

Richard L. Reece, MD, and Brian Klepper, PhD

First published in HealthLeaders Media

For some time, we have speculated that America's health system is sliding towards a financial crisis that could spill over into the general economy and bring it down.

The logic goes like this: explosive growth in the cost of healthcare is pricing rank-and-file Americans out of the coverage market and reducing the system's (inflation-adjusted) available revenues. All the while, service demands have continued to increase, creating a mounting resource-demand mismatch.