David Blumenthal on Grappling with the Size of U.S. Health Care
<p>Everything about the U.S. health care system is big. If it were a nation, it would have the world's fifth-largest gross domestic product. And before the Affordable Care Act, the U.S. had more underinsured and uninsured people than the entire population of Germany.</p>
<p>In his l<a href="/blog/2014/big-grappling-size-us-health-care">atest blog post,</a> Commonwealth Fund President David Blumenthal, M.D., reminds us that, when the United States sets about to reform its health care system, it is taking on a really big job. With this in mind, he weighs the value of recent signs of progress: the estimated 20 million who have gained insurance under the law, a leveling off in health care cost growth, and a 1.5 percent drop in the rate of hospital readmissions. </p>
<p>"We are pretty tough on ourselves and our collective projects in the U.S.," Dr. Blumenthal says. "But we don’t often take into account the incredible effort required to move the health care needle, or the enormous value in human and economic terms of seemingly modest progress."</p>
<p>Read the complete post on <a href="/blog/2014/big-grappling-size-us-health-care">The Commonwealth Fund Blog</a>.</p>
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/newsletters/ealerts/2014/jul/david-blumenthal-on-grappling-with-the-size-of-us-health-care