A recent article in the New Yorker, for example, showed how McAllen, Texas is spending twice as much as El Paso County—not because people in McAllen are sicker and not because they are getting better care. They are simply using more treatments—treatments they don’t really need; treatments that, in some cases, can actually do people harm by raising the risk of infection or medical error. And the problem is, this pattern is repeating itself across America.
President Obama referring today to this article, which you should read.
Good article, but it would have been nice if the author had made a visit to El Paso, too, since he mentions the city over and over. I don’t know how much better El Paso doctors really are at holding down costs — a few years ago I was advised to have a CAT scan that I now think was entirely unnecessary.
Yay for NMK on Twitter :-).