| The Six Stages of the Healthcare Economy-Is Socialized Medicine at the Door? A Historical Review (2005) | |||||||||
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| The healthcare industry, nonexistent a century ago, is now a huge fraction of the U.S.economy and an intricate business with a multitude of legislative problems. This review article willsummarize the recent history of the healthcare industry, evaluate how hospitals today make and losemoney, and provide a few projections about the future of healthcare in America. The hope is that thehealthcare industry will provide new incentives for physicians. A first step would be to improveprevention, which will decrease hospitalization. A second step would be to decrease the administrativeworkload involved in seeing patients so that physicians can see more of them without decreasing thequality of care provided. The growth in the number of elderly patients who require more and moresophisticated medical technology is an important demographic trend. This group’s healthcare isgovernment-funded; socialized medicine is inevitable if for no other reason than the needs of thisgroup will soon be where most healthcare dollars are spent. | |||||||||
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