Matthew Heineman Quotes

It is time to maximize and prioritize our health care dollars.

We need to work together to fairly assess and improve the long-term economic and health value - and affordability - of all components of the healthcare system, including hospitalizations, drugs, devices, and other interventions, to optimize our health investment decisions.

I believe a nation does not maximize its health care until it starts to ask the hard question: How can we prioritize our expenditures to buy the most health care for the most people? We should not apologize for rationing; we should promote it and advance it.

When it comes to health care, the United States is on another planet. The United States spends about 35 percent more per capita than the next two highest-spending countries—Norway and Switzerland…no matter how we measure it—whether by life expectancy or for survival of specific diseases like asthma, heart disease, or some cancers; by the rate of medical errors; or simply by satisfaction with health services, the United States is actually doing worse than a number of countries like France or Germany… America spends far more than other countries, and doesn’t see better results.

What we should care about is health - reduction of morbidity and mortality. Too often, we instead pay attention to whether something is 'normal.' A hospital may spend several million dollars separating a pair of conjoined twins, even though that separation is likely to leave them worse off.

How do you deliver the best possible and affordable health care to maximize health?

Economists specialize in pointing out unpleasant trade-offs - a skill that is on full display in the health care debate. We want patients to receive the best care available. We also want consumers to pay less. And we don't want to bankrupt the government or private insurers. Something must give.

We see healthcare shifting from a procedure reimbursement, where in this country doctors are reimbursed for how many procedures they conduct, to a world where people will be reimbursed for the outcomes - did the patient actually get better, and what was the total cost of the cycle of care.

The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80% of the total health care bill out there. There is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. The decision is not whether or not we will ration care. The decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.

It is my passionate belief that we can all have better health care through rationing.

Our goal is to make Maine the healthiest state in the nation and reduce our overall health care costs.

Physicians today, as human beings, are not exempt from the perverse economic pressures created by fee-for-service regimes to see more patients for shorter appointments and order more tests and procedures. If the incentives were changed to pay to foster better health outcomes, I am convinced physician behavior would change over time.

What you see is when the government gets involved, you run out of money and health care gets rationed.

In health care today, we spend most of the dollars - in terms of treating disease - in the last two years of a person's life.

Supported by digital data, new data-driven tools, and payment policies that reward improving the quality and value of care, doctors, hospitals, patients, and entrepreneurs across the nation are demonstrating that smarter, better, more accessible, and more proactive care is the best way to improve quality and control health care costs.

For the amount of money that the country is going to spend this year on health care, you can go out and hire a doctor for every seven families in the US and pay the doctor almost $230,000 a year to cover them.

At least 25 percent of the money Americans spend on health care is wasted.

It is inevitable that we are going to have to ration health care in the United States.

They call it managed care but it really is only managed costs.

Illinois has the opportunity to lead the country in providing more affordable health care options to its citizens.

We need to transform our system so people know what they are paying for health care, so they know whether they are getting good quality health care, and so they have a reason and ability to care.

There's this fascination in America that more is better: we want that procedure. And more is not necessarily better when it comes to health care. We as consumers really need to understand that.

The postcode lottery means that the level of care you get differs hugely around the country, and the health service simply cannot meet every demand that is put upon it.

Let's lower costs for health care. Let's put patients in charge of their solutions.

Everyone knows that my key drivers to moving health care policies is improving access and reducing costs and improving outcomes.