Heal thyself. (Society).(analysis of 'Let's Put Consumers in Charge of Heath Care' by Regina Herzlinger in the July 2002 issue of Harvard Business Review)

Regina Herzlinger, "Let's Put Consumers in Charge of Health Care" in Harvard Business Review, July 2002, (harvardbusinessonline.org)

Most observers agree that America's health care system is a mess: Expenses continue to rise, many individuals lack insurance, and few incentives exist to control costs. As a solution to this state of affairs, Harvard Business School professor Regina Herzlinger argues that health care consumers, not employers, should make nearly all significant choices about health insurance. She proposes that employers should require their workers to purchase catastrophic health insurance but leave almost all other choices to the employees themselves. This system, she argues, would bring a wide range of benefits, among them:

Cost containment: With patients paying the bills themselves, there would be more incentives to avoid overspending on health care and over-insurance of healthy individuals.

Innovation: Faced with many different consumers rather than just a few big purchasers, health care providers and hospitals ...