Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Healthcare Costs? Who Cares?
It is hard to pick up a newspaper these days without reading something about the public’s concern over the high and rising cost of health care, which many believe threatens our economic competitiveness in the global economy and which alarmists claim is bankrupting the nation.
But if you read only the healthcare literature, you might not know anything about it at all.
The January 9, 2006 issue of Modern Healthcare reported the top eleven issues of concern to hospital CEO’s. Cost didn’t make the list.
On that same day, AHA Today, the weekly newsletter of the American Hospital Association, carried two companion articles summarizing the major issues faced by the Association during the past year and to be addressed in 2006. Cost didn’t make either of those lists, either.
So it seems that everybody is concerned about the cost of health care except those in a position to do something about it.
I noted long ago that no hospital administrator ever got his portrait in the lobby for saving money.
If progress is to be made in addressing the cost problem in health care, that will have to change.
It is hard to pick up a newspaper these days without reading something about the public’s concern over the high and rising cost of health care, which many believe threatens our economic competitiveness in the global economy and which alarmists claim is bankrupting the nation.
But if you read only the healthcare literature, you might not know anything about it at all.
The January 9, 2006 issue of Modern Healthcare reported the top eleven issues of concern to hospital CEO’s. Cost didn’t make the list.
On that same day, AHA Today, the weekly newsletter of the American Hospital Association, carried two companion articles summarizing the major issues faced by the Association during the past year and to be addressed in 2006. Cost didn’t make either of those lists, either.
So it seems that everybody is concerned about the cost of health care except those in a position to do something about it.
I noted long ago that no hospital administrator ever got his portrait in the lobby for saving money.
If progress is to be made in addressing the cost problem in health care, that will have to change.
