Catastrophic Care - David Goldhill

David Goldhill's new book Catastrophic Care: How American Health Care Killed My Father--and How We Can Fix It is a follow up of his brilliant 2009 essay.

I had been suffering from an unbearable tooth ache for the past few days but had to wait couple of days before I could see the dentist. It turned out to be a simple inflammation and the dentist prescribed Vicodin. I never take pills leave alone Vicodin but I couldn't wait to get home from the pharmacy to pop the pill to kill the pain. The only thought that on my mind in those painful moments was how will someone without insurance in this country live through this pain?

David Goldhill's interview here:

On giving health care "a pass":

"There is a sense that there is a something uniquely different about health care. You'll often hear people say that health care shouldn't be a business, as if 15 million people can perform this service without caring about their economic interests. We fund all of health care through insurance. ... We think because our insurer or Medicare will reimburse something, we probably should do it. It's one of the explanations why there is so much waste in health care. ... That kind of accountability is something we've given health care a pass on because we feel it's just so different from any other human activity."


On where the money for health insurance is coming from:

"Most of us don't understand that our employer isn't really paying for our health insurance — we are. Every economist will tell you that money, which has grown so enormously, is just coming out of our paychecks. ... A major reason that wage rates in the United States flattened in the last decade and are expected to stay flat is because your employer is paying more and more for your health care instead of paying more and more to you."