Which one of these cost-curves do you like better--the one on the left, showing costs going down, or the one on the right, showing costs going up?
It's great to seek to bend the cost curve on healthcare, but it would be even better if we could break those curves. Just as we did with computer technology, thanks to Moore's Law. In the computer and related sectors, of course, cost-crashes are the norm. See the comparison above: That's a chart showing Moore's Law on the left vs. a chart showing future healthcare spending, from the Peterson Foundation.
We had better do something. Because President Obama was right last night on ABC News when he said that otherwise, rising spending will "bankrupt the government." We don't want that, but we also don't want to abandon sick people.
Healthcare and medicine are many things, some profound, some sacred. But in the final analysis, the science of healthcare and medicine can be seen as yet another area where a full-fledged information strategy should yield results in keeping with other realms of the Information Age.
