New York University Medical Center, New York, NY 10282, USA.
J Community Health. 2012 Aug;37(4):888-96. doi: 10.1007/s10900-011-9534-8.
The level of health care spending in the United States and other developed nations is rising at a disturbingly rapid rate. However, in the United States, these increases are not justified by superior performance. Rather, most other wealthy countries' inhabitants live longer and suffer from fewer medical problems than the average American. This paper demonstrates the continued abundance of opportunities for substantially reducing health care costs without decreasing the quality of care. In particular, it emphasizes the need to reduce the practice of defensive medicine and to enlarge the cadre of non-specialist physicians who educate future doctors. Such cost-saving opportunities are not rare phenomena but are widely available and offer the United States opportunities to move toward the markedly lower cost levels that have been achieved in other countries.
美国和其他发达国家的医疗保健支出水平正在以惊人的速度快速上升。然而，在美国，这些增长并没有被优越的表现所证明。相反，大多数其他富裕国家的居民比普通美国人寿命更长，遭受的医疗问题也更少。本文表明，在不降低医疗质量的情况下，仍然有大量机会大幅降低医疗成本。特别是，它强调需要减少防御性医疗的做法，并扩大教育未来医生的非专家医生队伍。这种节省成本的机会并不罕见，而是广泛存在的，为美国提供了向其他国家明显较低的成本水平迈进的机会。
