Reforming Health Care in the United States: Value-Based Technology in an Age of Soaring Costs

Abstract

This thesis examines the problems facing United States health care today, focusing predominantly on the issue of rising costs. It investigates a two-part research question: (1) Why is the United States an outlier in health care spending? (2) How can technology be implemented to lower health care costs in the United States? I challenge the notion that capacity, medical culture, and technology have been the main reasons for increasing costs. By critically evaluating conflicting scholarly arguments, I determine that the key causal factor for unsustainable costs in the United States is higher prices. I then show how technology, rather than driving up costs, has the potential to lower them by mitigating the effect of high prices. My research synthesizes both primary and secondary sources. In particular, I utilize country-level data to expose the problems with the United States system and present two case studies of technological innovations that have the potential to lower costs. While debate over the issue of soaring costs in health care is often approached by politicians with partisan opinions, I attempt to present the problem through a lens of objective data on costs without making normative claims about the system as a whole. Instead of recommending further top-down legislative changes, I approach this public policy issue with a new, bottom-up approach. Through a detailed analysis, this thesis explores both the potential of and the barriers to implementing low-cost, value-based technology to drive down rising costs in the United States health care system.