A Long View on Health Care: Think like an Investor (New York Times)

Is health care really just disease care? The CDC estimates that 75% of health care spending is for chronic diseases that could be prevented, said Dana Goldman, director of the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Southern California. Goldman recalled something a doctor had said to him: “Look, I am dealing with this obese person and they have a constellation of conditions—high cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, diabetes. The best thing I can do is take them for a walk. But I don’t get reimbursed for that.” Goldman said the world would be different if we reimbursed on the basis of preventing disease. “The point of health care reform was essentially to get people insurance. You could say that we would pay for what we really care about, which is health. But health care insurance has not succeeded in giving people health.”