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Gawande points to a study recognizing a group of people that disproportionately uses medical resources:

‘His calculations revealed that just one per cent of the hundred thousand people who made use of Camden’s medical facilities accounted for thirty per cent of its costs.’

And a potential solution for these ‘super-utilizers:’

‘In addition to physicians and nurses, the Center employs eight full-time “health coaches,” who help patients manage their health.’

‘Health-coaches’ frightens me a bit.  I’m still worried about politicizing the issue further; entrenching health-care as a right, which will also make it a political football (soon to be third-rail), potentially unionize it, open it to many more forms abuse and fraud (and diverging political and healh-insurance goals).

A door to single-payer?  What about rising costs?

A reader sent in two quotes from Henry Hazlitt, libertarian economist:

“The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.”

and

“The first requisite of a sound monetary system is that it put the least possible power over the quantity or quality of money in the hands of the politicians.”

Related On This Site:  Atul Gawande At The New Yorker: ‘Testing, Testing’…From The New Yorker: Atul Gawande On Health Care-”The Cost Conundrum”

From If-Then Knots: Health Care Is Not A Right…But Then Neither Is Property?

A Few Health Care Links-03/18/2010