Truly Curing the Healthcare Crisis

Further to the last post…some 16 years after writing it…with that time to contemplate on what I wrote then…but still believing that the basis is true…I submit the following:

Incentives ultimately drive behavior. If you don’t believe that, go read Human Action by B. F. Skinner. Any system that is not designed with incentives to promote its purpose will fail in its purpose. Obviously, when you pay a healthcare provider only when you are sick, there is not much financial incentive for a healthcare provider to keep you healthy. Sorry to say that, but if you were always healthy, you would never go to a healthcare provider. Healthcare providers would cease to exist.

On the other hand, I realize since writing the last post in 1994 that healthcare providers are not going to agree to such a system, when they are not completely in control, that is, the patient is almost totally in control of their lifestyle once outside of the healthcare practitioners’ office with respect to their diet, medications, risks, and so forth. Combine that with incentive for the patient not to follow their healthcare practitioners’ instructions by partying hearty and so on, that is, the healthcare practitioner pays if the patient gets sick, and the patient doesn’t. Without incentives parallel to, or in partnership with, their healthcare providers, patients are not as likely to stay healthy.

As a result, there must be a partnership between the healthcare provider and the patient, whereby the healthcare provider will make less money, and the patient will pay more money, to the extent the patient is not healthy and requires greater health care costs, and the healthcare provider will make more money, and the patient will save more money, to the extent that the patient remains healthy and doesn't require healthcare costs.

The incentive theory is crystal clear and simple. Now for the hard part. How do you redesign and rebuild a complicated healthcare system to these theoretical specifications? I will continue working and writing on this, but in the meantime, I see a great pre-med senior thesis or a great doctoral thesis on this challenge. How about you? Your incentive is in curing the health care crisis, which is draining the life blood out of this nation.

Beality