The solution Medicare is shutting down

Ezra Klein posted this story on WashingtonPost.com in April. It's been tucked away in a row of 80+ Firefox tabs, and I finally got back to it today. It's a fabulous read about an extraordinary program that addresses issues of chronic illness with a trauma-informed, creative approach, which is being shut down.

Kenneth Thorpe, chairman of the health policy and management school at Emory University, estimates that 95 percent of spending in Medicare goes to patients with one or more chronic conditions — with enrollees suffering five or more chronic conditions accounting for 78 percent of its spending. “This is the Willie Sutton rule,” he says. “If 80 percent of the spending is going to patients with five or more conditions, that’s where our health-care system needs to go.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-solution-medicare-is-shutting-down/2013/04/26/12d50074-ad26-11e2-a8b9-2a63d75b5459_story.html