The New Yorker‘s Atul Gawande on “What a Texas town can teach us about health care“:
McAllen is in Hidalgo County, which has the lowest household income in the country … McAllen has another distinction, too: it is one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country. Only Miami—which has much higher labor and living costs—spends more per person on health care. In 2006, Medicare spent fifteen thousand dollars per enrollee here, almost twice the national average. The income per capita is twelve thousand dollars. …
President Barack Obama said in a March speech at the White House. “By a wide margin, the biggest threat to our nation’s balance sheet is the skyrocketing cost of health care.” …
El Paso County, eight hundred miles up the border, has essentially the same demographics. … Yet in 2006 Medicare expenditures … in El Paso were $7,504 per enrollee – half as much as in McAllen. … There’s no evidence that the treatments and technologies available at McAllen are better than those found elsewhere in the country. … Nor does the care given in McAllen stand out for its quality. … The primary cause of McAllen’s extreme costs was, very simply, the across-the-board overuse of medicine. … Continue reading "Municipalize Medicine?" »
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