We’re often asked if cost and quality are linked in health care — if more expensive treatment or services are necessarily better. So we were pleased to see this passage in a piece about how Los Angeles residents who are losing access to Cedars-Sinai, the expensive L.A. hospital, might not be suffering so much.
“There is even evidence—contradicting the consumer maxim that you get what you pay for—that some people getting more expensive care are actually worse off. This fall, Modern Healthcare magazine analyzed cardiac catheterization records from a dozen cities. In seven of them, the hospitals with lower average costs had better outcomes. As Gregg Fonarow, a cardiologist at UCLA Medical Center, told the magazine, ‘Just because your insurance company paid a whole lot for your hospitalization doesn’t mean it was good quality to you.’ ” Jonathan Cohn, “Obamacare Insurance plans: Cedars-Sinai Hospital off limits to many,” New Republic.
