A Little More Spending Is Not the End of the World

Investigating the drivers of healthcare spending is the underlying goal of Going Below The Surface.  An article published last month in the New England Journal of Medicine, “Do We Spend Too Much on Health Care?,” opened up a very important discussion. The authors, University of Chicago’s Katherine Baicker and Harvard’s Amitabh Chandra, argue that higher levels of spending are not always a bad thing, especially in a rich country like the United States where patients and government may be willing to pay more, especially for high-quality care. Instead, the authors believe that the focus should be on whether the care is high value or low value, not high cost or low cost. Read more here.

(Source: Baicker K, Amitabh C. Do We Spend Too Much on Health Care? NEJM August 13, 2020 383(7):605)