Reducing Medical Costs

Dr. Andrew Weil, one of the most visionary physicians in the country, writes this today about Obama's speech and health care reform:

...as I have stated in my book, Why Our Health Matters: A Vision of
Medicine That Can Transform Our Future, medical insurance reform of any
kind is doomed without medical content reform. It doesn't matter if the
insurance is provided by a private corporation, the federal government or any
other entity. A health care system that costs $64,000 annually for a family of
four in seven to nine years - as ours will, without radical change in medical
practice - will quickly bankrupt taxpayers, policyholders, or whoever pays the
premiums.

That's why a quick reference in the hour-long speech gets my most
enthusiastic accolades. "We have long known that some places, like the
Intermountain Healthcare in Utah or the Geisinger Health System in rural
Pennsylvania, offer high-quality care at costs below average," the president
said. He added that a special commission "can help encourage the adoption of
these common-sense best practices by doctors and medical professionals
throughout the system - everything from reducing hospital infection rates to
encouraging better coordination between teams of doctors."

Absolutely!

These weren't the most-well turned phrases and they garnered no
applause, but to me, they were the vital heart of the speech. Everything the
president proposed will fail, utterly, unless we transplant the "best practices"
in the current system into medical facilities around the nation, too many of
which are dysfunctional due to fear and greed.