Consider these facts
- Over 47 million Americans
are uninsured - 15% of the population.
- It takes an average of 3 hours and 43 minutes to get treatment at an emergency room.
- Americans currently spend $2 trillion a year on health care, and the total is projected to reach $4 trillion by 2016.
- Medicare is projected to go bankrupt by 2017.
In his new book, Skin In The
Game: How Putting Yourself First Today Will Revolutionize Health
Care Tomorrow (March 14, 2008; Wiley; $27.95; Cloth), author
John H. Hammergren (CEO of McKesson Corporation) says that we're
at the dawn of a new era for health care. He sees our current health
care problems, dire as they may seem, as "solvable
business problems."
Hammergren and co-author Phil Harkins
provide an overview of the history of the health care system, an
explanation of its current state, and a picture of the great strides
that they see being made in the near future. According to Hammergren
and Harkins, the American health care system is in a fragmented
state, split between mega-hospital systems, giant pharmaceutical
companies, billion-dollar insurance providers, and multiple layers
of government bureaucracy. However, the high-tech productivity
and quality boom experienced by other industries is finally catching
on in health care, making a fully digital and integrated system
possible for the first time.
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