Beware of seductive health-care fixes

Regina Herzinger in the WSJ suggests caution when looking abroad for health care fixes:

America, a nation prone to love at first sight with seductive health-care fixes, is now falling for the systems of the Netherlands and Switzerland. Their representatives recently displayed their dowry in D.C., and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt personally checked out the potential brides earlier this month.

Beware: The last time we fell in love, it was with managed care, as exemplified by California’s Kaiser Permanente. But the Kaiser model proved difficult to replicate outside of California, even for Kaiser itself. The version of managed care we got was of the “Just Say No” variety: “No” to enrollee requests and provider referrals. It has made a mess of our health-care system.

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