Consumer Driven Healthcare

[tomz]

With the recent discussions on healthcare in the US fresh in my mind, I found an interesting opinion piece on consumer-driven healthcare.* It is rather long, but very informative.
http://www.thehealthcareblog.com/the..._consumer.html

Here's a brief snippet:
"While Consumer Reports can rate mid-priced refrigerators briskly and clearly, in a way that makes comparisons easy, it is all but impossible, even for physicians, to be positive of the relative benefits of a great many medical procedures. The product is opaque; you can’t compare two treatments the way you might compare two cars.* This is not just because the human body is so complex, but because each body is unique—what worked on one patient may not work on another."