In the Green Room: David Goldhill on How American Health Care Killed His Father

Gerrit Lansing /

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvHPTq3L4Y4[/youtube]

David Goldhill is President and CEO of the Game Show Network and has run numerous businesses during his career. When his father died of  a hospital-borne infection two years ago he began researching the entire U.S. health care system, analyzing it with the keen eye of a businessman. What he learned is that intermediaries like insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid distort a system that is supposed to provide health care to individuals into one that serves faceless and, largely, uncaring bureaucracies. Case in point: 100,000 people die every year in America of infections received in hospitals. 100, 000 people. Why?

“This hospital saw someone other than my father as their customer,” said Goldhill at a Cato institute event in the Rayburn House office building last week.  “The role we’ve let intermediaries…play in our health care is not just about money, it’s also about who the providers really report to, what customer they’re really servicing.” (more…)