Forbes January 13, 2020
As the decade turned and the 2020s began, news headlines made it seem as though the healthcare revolution was already underway. One banner boasted “2020: Another Year of Radical Change in Healthcare,” mirroring similar stories claiming that innovations and technologies will continue to transform medicine in the year ahead.
Just one problem with these predictions: There’s no empirical or statistical evidence that American healthcare has undergone (or will soon undergo) any kind of radical change, or even meaningful improvement.
In healthcare, the past is a reliable predictor of the future. And when you look at key performance measures—such as cost, quality and satisfaction—it’s clear that U.S. healthcare underperformed over the last decade.
So, why should we expect anything...