In particular, Colvin notes that we have the choice between the Brute Force approach and the People Aren't Dummies approach. The first has failed, and it's time to try the second. (Note: I don't necessarily agree with his endorsement of the Ryan plan).
In the 6/20/2011 Wall Street Journal, Greg Conko of CEI writes, "There's No 'Average' Cancer Patient". The FDA's reliance statistics and collectivized health measures jeopardizes individual patients. (H/T: Tom Bowden.)
As Conko notes:
The weakness of the FDA's reasoning here is that averages ignore that individual patients respond differently to treatments. Particularly with life-threatening illnesses, where the downside of any treatment is relatively small, average or median survivability too often masks the fact that some patients respond very well.The 6/19/2011 WSJ editorial also describes, "The Accountable Care Fiasco". The basic premise behind ACOs is that government micro-management can guarantee good health care.
(As I noted in my recent TownHall piece, this is just the latest incarnation of the "central planner fallacy" applied to modern health care.)
