“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes” in healthcare?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes in latin means who will guard the guardians? The idea has frightening applicability to healthcare.

When you ask who will guard the guardians, you inquire who will control the controllers? You worry that those with power will use it as they choose, not as you–those without power–choose?

There is constant talk today about how we are drowning in the cost of healthcare. All are true.
• Healthcare spending accelerates faster than GDP or inflation.
• Spending on health care is an anchor reducing our international competitiveness.
• Our healthcare costs are out of sync with what the Public gets.
• We spend much, much more than nations with universal health care.

Since this is a national issue affecting the whole country, we naturally turn to the Federal government to fix it. But before we do so, ask yourself who is the biggest spender of healthcare dollars: doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, pharmaceutical corporations, who?

While there are many ways to calculate an answer the prior question, there is one simple truth. If you count up all the money spent on healthcare in a year, 38% or about $1 trillion last year did not go to providers, hospitals, drug companies (and their executives), insurers, etc.

In other words, almost 40% of the dollars that go into the healthcare system don’t get out. They disappear in the “waste of the middle.’ These are dollars that go to the Government in various forms such as the bloated bureaucracy, insurance profits, regulatory compliance, and unfunded mandates. Government is by far the bigger spender as well as the biggest consumer of healthcare dollars.

So “quis custodiet ipsos custodes” in healthcare translates to: can we expect the biggest spender to suddenly stop spending?

System MD

Tweet This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Facebook Stumble This Post