When more expensive medicine is better medicine

WashingtonPost ^ | 04/02/2012 | Sarah Kliff

[SJackson]

The theory behind the health reform law is that you can deliver better care at lower cost. Support for that idea comes from a robust body of research — most prominently the Dartmouth Atlas project — which suggests that a decent amount of health care spending is unnecessary. Hospitals can get the same (if not better) outcomes, the thinking goes, if they focused on providing just the most cost-effective treatments.

But sometimes, more expensive care is also better care. That’s what a team of health-care economists have found in a new NBER paper, which looked at Medicare patients in New York. It found that, all other things being equal, those treated in higher-spending hospitals had mortality rates 20 to 30 percent lower than those treated in low-cost facilities.

Those findings, in some ways, contradict the Dartmouth Atlas research, which has suggested that more can be less.

“We find that more intensive intervention is associated with better outcomes when compared with less intensive interventions,” said Joseph Doyle, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management and lead author of the study. “We would say that this is a cautionary tale, that we cannot necessarily cut spending and expect quality to increase.”

[SJackson]

Never, we all want cheap medicine. Preferably free.

[allmost]

I like my baby brother alive. Therefore I do not like what follows.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks SJackson.

The theory behind the health reform law is that you can deliver better care at lower cost.

That's the public propaganda face -- there is no theory behind it, only ideology.

[itsahoot]

The theory behind the health reform law is that you can deliver better care at lower cost.

Code for Rationing.(Death Panels for those of us that are still Palin fans)

[itsahoot]

The theory behind the health reform law is that you can deliver better care at lower cost.

Code for Rationing.(Death Panels for those of us that are still Palin fans)

[cymbeline]

Higher cost medicine means things like the $100 aspirin, or 1/2 hour outpatient surgery for $10,000, correct?

The biggest financial problem America now has is the cost of medical care. It’s not a good time to write an article saying higher cost medicine is better. It probably is, but that’s beside the point.