Market-Driven Health Care: Who Wins, Who Loses in the Transformation of America's Largest Service Industry

No one will accuse Ms. Herzlinger of being a great writer, but her conversational style is easy to read and she does have some good ideas for how the healthcare industry should be. Ideas that still haven't been implemented even now, 8 years after it was written. She does make a fairly convincing argument for how focused factories could reduce costs. In addition, suggestions that everybody should have health insurance, that healthcare providers should not be insulated from market forces, that consumers are the ones with the real power to stop the soaring healthcare costs, and that they'll only curtail spending when given incentive to do so are good points that can't be made often enough. Points that seem even more relevant today given the continued increase in healthcare costs, the inability of the HMO system to manage them, and the spiraling problem the growing uninsured population is creating (the more uninsured people there are, the more insurance costs, which increases the number of uninsured, etc.). She has good ideas, I think it's time people listened. It's of vital importance that the healthcare system incorporate what's great about America, what has made America a leader in every other industry: innovation and sensibly regulated free markets. Ms. Herzlinger gives us a good way to get it done.I also have to ask if some of the other reviewers actually read the book. The author gives a pretty good analysis of how focused factories would reduce costs, using that 20% of the people produce 80% of the costs as a cornerstone of her argument. Also, she cites physicians' inability to deal with market forces as a cause of the problem and gives suggestions for how to deal with it.

This book received rave reviews in such varied publications as the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, the New England Journal of Medicine, the British Medical Journal, JAMA, and the New Democrat. It won the book year award from the American College of Health Care Executives. Since its publication it has regularly appeared in the Ingram Books' list of top 50 current events best sellers for good reason.

There's hope. Finally, a clear thinker presents a viable case for something other than a purely political solution to the continuing health care cost crisis. Herzlinger is anything but pithy. However, buried in the laborious presentation of her case is a blueprint for the only real solution to this critical problem (i.e., a serious dose of personal responsibility for the cost of health care by those who create the demand). This book is worth reading.

Any health care analysis is going to be wide ranging and possibly a little rambling. This book is no exception.Regina's book makes a good case for individual responsibility for health care purchases, though that may be a difficult and extended transformation.A more important point for me was applying the "Focussed Factory" concept to health care delivery. This is such an ideal approach for chronic disease management or popular surgical procedures. Regina sites statistics and actual patient outcomes to effectively make her argument.The "Focussed Factory" is something we can implement right now. That may be the core value of this book.

Finally, someone has produced a well-researched and articulate portrait of the largest, and most flawed, industry in America. Herzlinger emphatically proves that the plague in American health care is simple: consumers have been robbed of the power to control the market; a conclusion that has been dictated by common sense since Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations but which has not been delivered in one concise package until now. "Policy Wonks" and Bean Counters beware: Herzlinger proves that a free and open consumer-oriented market, and not volumes of stipulations and regulations, will propel the helath care industry to the apex of efficiency