Read This Now - Why Do We Spend So Much On Health Care?

Excuse me while I get out my drum.

Ok now go read Atul Gawande's latest piece in the New Yorker on run away health care spending and the culture of commercialism that has spawned it, as always you should be reading absolutely everything the man writes.

The most interesting tid bit to hit me was that the quality of care almost always goes up as the overall spending goes down (see Mayo Clinic).

When you look across the spectrum from Grand Junction to McAllen—and the almost threefold difference in the costs of care—you come to realize that we are witnessing a battle for the soul of American medicine. Somewhere in the United States at this moment, a patient with chest pain, or a tumor, or a cough is seeing a doctor. And the damning question we have to ask is whether the doctor is set up to meet the needs of the patient, first and foremost, or to maximize revenue.