An article published on October 29 at the Harvard Business Review titled Why Can’t U.S. Health Care Costs Be Cut in Half? suggests that by taking lessons from Karl Benz of Mercedes Benz, Henry Ford and India’s factory approach to medical care  we could in 10 years, reduce healthcare costs to half of what they are today. The ideas might make you uncomfortable or at least they do me, because it would mean doing things radically different, and yet I am really intrigued because it is a radically innovative way to fix the unfixable. The author makes the point that by using a factory approach, Indian hospitals are able to do open-heart surgeries for $3,000 as opposed to $75,000 to $150,000, largely because they are done in a few regional hospitals rather than at many hundreds of hospitals in the United States.

So the reason I posted this as an article was I thought it was an interesting enough concept that it might be worthwhile to have a discussion about it.  You might think, this has nothing to do with senior living except it does.  If we were able to reduce our nation’s healthcare cost by 30, 40, 50 percent it would free up vast sums of money that could be used to provide for seniors. What do you think is it a good idea or a bad idea? Would you be okay with this for you, for your family?