Not everything new is wonderful.
When a company improves its operations, it seeks to do so in a way that decreases costs or produces features customers want enough to pay for. It works to ensure that the benefits of adopting new procedures outweigh the costs.
At least, this is what profitable companies do when free to act in accordance with their reason for being.
Government regulations clash with this, however. One of the “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it” provisions of Obamacare, for example, forces medical practitioners to convert to electronic record-keeping — even if they think the burden unjustified.
A businessman may be wrong about whether to try a new way — and, if he does adopt an innovation, about how fast or thoroughly to adopt it. If he’s wrong, he’s free to change his mind as evidence comes in. But, in medicine, government edict replaces entrepreneurial judgment.
Mandates and prohibitions are already rife in the medical industry; Obamacare makes a bad situation worse. “In today’s health care system,” writes blogger Rituparna Basu, “a doctor’s judgment as to whether it makes sense to adopt a new technology for his practice is deemed irrelevant. The government is the one calling the shots, and jeopardizing doctors’ practices in the process.”
A sound diagnosis.
The prognosis might not be so negative, however. While governments tend to prescribe uniform, one-size-fits-all “cures,” ongoing advances in genetics point the other direction, to individualizing medical practice, finding specific causes of illnesses, and developing genetics-informed, patient-specific cures.
But it’s just possible that individually focused medicine would be enhanced by a healthy dose of individual freedom.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
3 replies on “Forced to Innovate”
When is he going to leave so my nightmares go away?
Electronic records are the reason that nurses now spend nearly a third of their day dressing charts instead of caring for patients. The unaffordable Affordable CAre Act is predicated on saving money by denying care. This will be done by micro-analysis of electronic records to look for reasons to deny paying for care already given but not well documented. Which will generate new, inovative ways of generating chart information or even flat-out lying in order to both give adequate care as well as to get paid. It saves no money.
There is fat in the system but it is not going to be trimmed by shorting doctors. And any savings will end up coming out of the budget for research and innovation. So don’t look for “better” care.
Individual freedom applies to more than patients. It also applies to practitioners. Let them work for a living. They are as entitled to the fruits of their labor as any of us.
The bill known as the Affordable Care Act is many things, but it is not reform.
As a patient, let me voice a desire for: catastrophic care insurance, the ability to pay for my health insurance (and health care) with pre-tax dollars and the ability to shop for health CARE. When I need diagnostic tests, let me shop for the provider that suits my needs. I should be able to find out the prices being charged before I show up for service.