David Gergen, former advisor to four U.S. presidents and currently professor of public service and director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, recently told HFMA his views on the biggest challenge facing the healthcare industry:
The biggest challenge facing the healthcare industry today is how to square the circle, namely, how to provide high-quality health care at costs that are affordable to all Americans. And we all know that there are tensions in that equation. People from all over the world still come to the United States for health care, because they realize the quality exceeds what can be found almost anywhere else, and that the best hospitals, the best doctors, the best surgeons are here. We are achieving the goal of high quality, but, as everyone knows, especially employers and people at the lower end of the income spectrum, the costs have been going up inexorably, so that today health care represents some 16 percent of GDP and is heading toward 25 percent. Those are unsustainable numbers, and that’s why the push is on. Given the number of people who are uninsured, given the inability of many people now to afford this high-quality health care, the push is on to reform the system. And I think reforms are going to come willy-nilly. Whether they come in time and whether we do this right are big question marks.
The biggest challenge facing the healthcare industry today is how to square the circle, namely, how to provide high-quality health care at costs that are affordable to all Americans. And we all know that there are tensions in that equation.
People from all over the world still come to the United States for health care, because they realize the quality exceeds what can be found almost anywhere else, and that the best hospitals, the best doctors, the best surgeons are here. We are achieving the goal of high quality, but, as everyone knows, especially employers and people at the lower end of the income spectrum, the costs have been going up inexorably, so that today health care represents some 16 percent of GDP and is heading toward 25 percent. Those are unsustainable numbers, and that’s why the push is on. Given the number of people who are uninsured, given the inability of many people now to afford this high-quality health care, the push is on to reform the system. And I think reforms are going to come willy-nilly. Whether they come in time and whether we do this right are big question marks.
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