One day, you wake up and look around and see that 90% of everything around you is there to maintain complexity, and not add value. That’s my definition of medicalcare in America. A new study published today in JAMA looks at healthcare spending in America and concludes:

Prices of labor and goods, including pharmaceuticals and devices, and administrative costs appeared to be the main drivers of the differences in spending.

Meanwhile, the medicalcare industry led all other industries in new employment and added 300,000 new jobs in 2017. As an industry, we need to focus on adding value, not adding jobs. I’m afraid, with today’s mandated health insurance complexities, this isn’t possible. That’s why incumbents won’t and can’t save us. Any new innovation will come from left field. And those innovations will strictly focus on 21st Century efficiencies that increase value and destroy complexity. But, in order to get there, it’s going to take a coalition of small and medium-sized players willing to think differently and invest their healthcare dollars in the future, not propping up the past.