Where Does It Hurt?

A bold new remedy for the sprawling and wasteful health care industry. Where else but the doctor’s office do you have to fill out a form on a clipboard? Have you noticed that hospital bills are almost unintelligible, except for the absurdly high dollar amount? Why is it that technology in other industries drives prices down, but in health care it’s the reverse? And why, in health care, is the customer so often treated as a mere bystander-and an ignorant one at that? The same American medical establishment that saves lives and performs wondrous miracles is also a GBP2.7 trillion industry in deep dysfunction. And now, with the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), it is called on to extend full benefits to tens of millions of newly insured. You might think that this would leave us with a bleak choice- either to devote more of our national budget to health care or to make do with less of it. But there’s another path. In this provocative book, Jonathan Bush, cofounder and CEO of athenahealth, ca