WINSTON-SALEM, MC — The U.S. health care system is broken with spiraling costs, according to Steve Feldman, founder of the physician rating Web site DrScore.com and a practicing physician. Whenever debates about health care costs surface, they include claims that rising costs are caused by predatory, money-hungry drug companies over charging, lack of competition for insurers and even malpractice suits.

Not so, says Dr. Feldman, who thinks there is a much simpler explanation, even if the solution itself may not be so easy to bring about.

We have written about Dr. Feldman’s doctor rating site previously on Techjournal South. See: DrScore puts you in the rating seat for background on his physician rating site.

In a new white paper “A Primer on Health Care Reform,” Dr. Feldman debunks common health care reform myths and offers several solutions to spiraling costs.

“U.S. doctors are capable of extraordinary technological feats,” Dr. Feldman says. “However, there are still problems, and, even with health care reform, costs continue to spiral out of control.”

In his white paper, Dr. Feldman debunks common myths surrounding insurers, drug companies and lawyers:

• Myth: For profit insurers don’t have enough competition and contribute to spiraling costs. “There is plenty of competition,” Dr. Feldman says. “Insurers’ for-profit status and high executive salaries are not the underlying cause of high health care costs either — there are many for-profit companies with well-paid executives that deliver great products at a reasonable cost.”

• Myth: Drug companies and the high cost of prescription medications are the problem. “Drug companies are just like other for-profit companies, except that most people don’t pay directly for drug products. Unlike other goods, consumers choose drugs primarily on perceived quality and not on price.”

• Myth: Malpractice lawyers are at the heart of the problem. “While fear of malpractice suits cause doctors headaches, malpractice accounts for only a tiny fraction of health care costs,” Dr. Feldman says.

Dr. Feldman attributes the spiraling cost of health care to the nation’s third-party payer system whereby consumers do not pay for health care services and medications directly.

“When insurers pay the bill, we are insulated from the cost,” he says.

“When buyers and sellers interact directly, most buyers are careful to purchase products and services they value and don’t waste money on things that provide little benefit to them. Solving the problem of ever-increasing costs has to first address the basic principle that someone has to say ‘no’ to high prices and have the incentive to pick the less expensive option.”

Dr. Feldman makes several suggestions to create greater price sensitivity and rein in spiraling costs, including:

• Patients should pay for more of the cost of care themselves. “Drug costs are high because when well-insured patients are given a choice between a $10 drug that may work reasonably well and a $10,000 drug that might work only marginally better, a well-insured patient chooses the $10,000 drug because the insurance company bears the cost,” Dr. Feldman says.

• A health insurance system should cover catastrophic events and require personal responsibility. “With automotive insurance, insurance plans pay for catastrophic events,’ Dr. Feldman says. “We pay for the little stuff, and that helps keep the cost of those products and services low. High deductible health insurance plans provide an affordable solution that puts needed incentives into place.”

• Greater personal responsibility on the part of patients. “If we want patients and doctors to make health care decisions, patients need to take more personal responsibility for the costs,” Dr. Feldman says.  “A physician may suggest performing an MRI, which can cost thousands of dollars, to rule out a very rare risk. If patients had to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for the test, they might still choose to do it, but would probably think more carefully about whether it is really necessary and would shop around to find the lowest cost provider, the way people do when they buy other consumer goods.”

For more information, or to read the complete white paper “A Primer on Health Care Reform,”  see: www.drscore.com.

By Joe Procopio

Joe Procopio

I’m not saying the Droid X is a clown phone. However, there are three major breakthroughs that the Droid X either introduces or galvanizes.

Design is a funny thing. It goes in cycles, like seasons — if seasons were fickle and controlled by the wants and needs of 13-year-old girls in southwestern Iowa who have views of the world based solely on articles about Zac Efron and Paramore lyrics.

I had to do so much research for that joke. Seriously.

The Point Is Design Is Fickle

It holds true for any consumer product, but especially for those that fall into the gadget or techie category, lifecycle design tends to run from the ridiculous to the sublime – followed by a massive shark-jumping procedure which pushes it back into the ridiculous, and it’s only a sheer luck and the avoidance of obsolescence that allows a return to the sublime.

Case in point: Remember when cars were square back in the late 1980s? Then things started to get all curvy, then there was the bubbly Taurus, they ruined the Mustang, and before anyone could say “Heeeeeey, wait just a second here…” they put out the Pontiac Aztec.

I’m not saying the Droid X is a Pontiac Aztec. The Kin One was the Aztec.

Bigness

Aspects of the cyclical nature of design also take hold over an entire industry. Take scale for example, and let’s go back to cars for a second. Cars started huge, then got small in the 70s when gas was expensive, then got huge again, but not like the first time, like massively huge. Too Huge.

Hummer huge.

I’m not saying Droid X is a Hummer.

iPhone Killa Killa

I wrote a column a couple years back in which I declared myself an Android fan. Today I have an Incredible, and I love it, except for the battery life, which is terrible.

In that same column, I declared a moratorium on looking for, predicting, or loudly heralding the next iPhone killer. Although it took nearly two years for anyone to listen to me, they all finally realized that the only thing that could stop Apple was Apple, and that realization only took hold recently as Apple has gone way out of its way to try to destroy itself.

So there will be no comparisons of the Droid X to the iPhone here. We’re done with that. I will say that the Incredible was designed to look, feel, and act exactly like an iPhone. It was, on introduction, heralded as the next iPhone killer. And it held that title for about a week, until the hype built up around the Evo.

But outside of some proprietary applications and a few extra bells and whistles, the Evo was a lot like the Incredible. Except it was bigger. Not dramatically bigger, but noticeably bigger.

The Droid X has so much hype behind it that there are actually very few iPhone killer references around it. It’s its own phone. That is breakthrough number one. Most of the people who drooled over the Incredible or the Evo actually already owned or knew the significance of previous Android phones. My grandmother wanted the Droid X.

But when I got my demo and opened the box, I was hit with one first, and very strong, impression.

OH MY GOD IT’S A CLOWN PHONE!

DroidX and the Incredible

The Droid X is not a clown phone.

But it is big.

It looks like an iPaq. And just to rib the Apple elite again, I’ve had more than one of them snicker when I say that and tell me “Dude. It’s called an iPAD.” The point is that until now, everything was about small. The iconic bag phone turned into the handheld and then the Startac and then got smaller and smaller until Will Ferrell finally sharkjumped it on SNL.

Smartphones brought about the necessary and logical increase in size, and the iPhone’s touch screen blew that size out to what we thought was the maximum comfortable width. Pants-pocket size took care of the height. Done.

The Droid X simply says, look, we have slightly bigger hands and deeper pockets.

And who will refute that?

It’s a taste thing. I’m comfortable with the Incredible, but I’ve spoken to several people who have been waiting for a phone of this size. And that’s breakthrough number two..

But Where Will It End?

That’s the big question. The huge, enormous, monstrous question.

Steve, you heard it from me. Put a phone in the iPad. It’s time.

The fact is that, other than declaring a new standard size for handsets, the Droid X doesn’t change the landscape much – this is also good, as I had an instant point of reference when picking up the handset and turning it on. I knew how to take photos, how to download my first app, and how to get my email.

It also has much better battery life than the Incredible.

Breakthrough #3

However, the biggest breakthrough that comes along with the Droid X is the inclusion of Swype. Maybe it’s not the first time, maybe it won’t reach critical mass with this handset, but it’s the first big chance for adoption for this awesome feature.

Swype allows you to trace words on a keyboard as your input method, combining a unique way of moving about the keyboard with a super intuitive automated selection.

It took a little getting used to, but within the first hour I was able to type entire emails with Swype and it felt right and went in quick, with one, I mean one, error (“see” always came out as “se” no matter how hard I tried) and only a few times where I had to look at the word it had chosen to make sure it was the right word (it was). And I’m talking words like “significant” and “breakthrough” and “Paramore.”

Swype actually has a decent chance of replacing two-thumb mobile device entry.

And that’s huge. Bigger than the phone itself.

The Droid X is not that big. It’s just big.

Joe Procopio is the founder of Intrepid Company, a technical and management consulting firm  that has spun out publishing company/creative network Intrepid Media and digital incubator ExitEvent. No small hands jokes. He can be reached at joe@intrepidcompany.com or twitter @jproco.