Health Care: The Iron Triangle

• Introduction-

Health care is extremely costly in the United States. Although the rate of growth in spending has attenuated in recent years, per capita spending on health care is estimated to be 50 to 200 percent greater in the United States than in other economically developed countries. Despite leading the world in costs, however, the United States ranks twenty-sixth in the world for life expectancy and ranks poorly on other indicators of quality.(Bruke L, Lyan A,2014) "The Iron Triangle" is a term coined to describe the relationship between cost, quality, and access in all sorts of institutions such as policy making, healthcare, and businesses. You can't affect one aspect without affecting the other two aspects, it is a concept full of

Many more were without adequate health insurance. The high cost of premiums or premium contributions at work has created a financial barrier to both health insurance and health care. According to the 2008 Kaiser Survey, about 29 percent of the uninsured postponed health care because of cost considerations (Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, 2009). In contrast, 7 percent of the insured postponed health cares. Delaying health care can lead to complications requiring more expensive treatment, as well as premature death. Thus, there is evidence in health care of a vicious cycle of high costs, leading to poor access, which in turn leads to undesirable outcomes. While the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is estimated to help about 28 million Americans gain new health insurance coverage by 2016 (McGlynn, Cordova, Wasserman, and Girosi, 2010), the impact of the health reform legislation on costs and quality is less certain. Reasons for high cost are Third-party payment, Imperfect market, Growth of technology, Increase in the elderly population, Medical model of health care delivery, Multi-payer system and administrative costs, Defensive medicine, Waste and abuse, Practice variations. Management leader Peter Drucker: “If you cannot measure something you cannot control it. And if you cannot control it you cannot manage

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