NJBIZ | Looking for New Ways to Fix Health Care

. . . Len Nichols, director of the Health Policy Program at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit public policy institute based in Washington, D.C., argued that the insured are already coming up with some of that money. The uninsured “present a hidden tax to the rest of us” because hospitals charge insured patients more than they should to make up revenues lost by treating patients without insurance, he said.

Meanwhile, insured Americans aren’t getting much quality for the money, Nichols said. “We spend more [for health care] than any other country on the planet and our overall health care system is ranked number 37, right next to Slovenia and Costa Rica. These are countries that should beat us in soccer, not health care.”

Roughly 30 percent of health care costs do not produce clinical value, Nichols said. He recommended solutions such as providers using more evidence-based treatments, a greater use of information technology in doctors’ offices, and making it harder for pharmaceutical companies to get new drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

To get a new drug approved now, drug makers must show the therapy “didn’t kill anyone and beat a placebo” in human studies, Nichols said. “Prayer beats a placebo. So maybe we ought to think about raising the bar just a tad.”