Mediconomics

Just finished reading Andy Kessler's recent book (July 06), The End of Medicine. The book got a lot of well-deserved press. "Entertaining," "smart-aleck," "captivating" -- a business book with a great story. Here's what Kessler says it's about:

I spent the last several years following doctors around, digging around research labs, going to imaging conferences and getting myself poked, prodded and scanned. And I hate the sight of blood, what was I thinking? In the end, it really comes down to finding silicon so diagnostics can get cheap enough for insurance companies and Medicare to make it mainstream.

Here's what I say it's about:

More than a story, more than a quest for the next great leap in healthcare technology -- this is about "mediconomics," the secrets that the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry are keeping on the costs of care and profitability of outcomes. (...In My Humble Opinion) Healthcare IT and frontier healthcare technologies (diagnostics, prevention, nanomedicine) will open up a radically new world of possibilities for preserving health and preventing disease. Unfortunately, current economic incentives in the healthcare industry instead promote chronic care to ease us out of disease states we probably never needed to get into in the first place.