I'm generally a pretty pessimistic person. Or maybe I'm just a realist. For example, I spend a lot of time reading and thinking about climate change, and I have reached absolutely no conclusions about anything. I feel like no one can have an informed opinion on the subject because there are just too many variables and unknowns.
I feel sort of the same way about health care in this country. As a ER doctor friend said to me recently "there is no system" in the health care system.
But Atul Gawande, a physician who writes for the New Yorker, has the power to make me less pessimistic. He did it last summer when he wrote about
end of life choices. He did it
2 years ago when he contrasted health care in a smallish place in Texas with care given in Rochester, MN.
Now he's done it again by writing about
medical hot spots: specific places and specific types of people who account for huge gobs of health care $$. And how some very smart people are using common sense and grass roots techniques to keep those specific people healthier. If you're interested in this kind of (wonky?) thing, you gotta read it; I can't summarize it.
Photograph by Phillip Toledano.
