However, if the only outcome variable is total costs, then you’re missing the point.

It’s about value. Value incorporates both benefit (outcomes, service, etc.) and cost.

If the only variable of relevance is total costs, and if it’s cheaper to let people die sooner, then why are we even talking about health care?

Yeah, a dead person cost less. But dead people are also aren’t very productive, unless used as props.

Moronic, irrelevant, and poorly designed study = conclusions of the same quality.

I must have dreamed it.

Either that or fundamental groundless beliefs are unimpeded by something as trivial as evidence.

There is a fundamental concept from public health/environmental health that says that the waste produced by a community should not be transported out of that community, but dealt with by it. This avoids the out-of-sight-out-of-mind phenomenon.

The average healthcare consumer doesn’t see how their use of resources affects the rest of their community (or at least risk pool).

Employers are feeling it.

Society as a whole, however, does not. (It still boggles my mind that there are people that can’t figure out how the uninsured and underinsured and high-deductible insured ultimately raise costs for everyone!)

“I want freedom, but I want others to pay for my poor choices.” That ain’t democracy dude.