Disrupting healthcare for good

I recently finished the book "The Innovator's Prescription" by Christensen, Grossman, and Hwang.
For those who might not know this, Clayton Christensen is the author of the classic book "The Innovators Dilemma" and coined the term "disruptive technology", explaining how even well run companies can disappear quickly if they miss the threat from cheaper and rapidly evolving technologies.
For this book, Christensen, a Harvard Business School Professor, has teamed up with two MDs, Grossman and Hwang, and takes a stab at healthcare.

This time around it is not about warning managers of companies within our current healthcare system that they might go the way of the steam engine manufacturer. Just the opposite, the aim is to figure out how the current healthcare system will meet the same fate the steam engine did: to be replaced with something much more efficient and cheaper.

The problem with our current healthcare system is that there are no free-market forces at play, and the whole thing is something a central planner from the former USSR might be proud of, or rather not be proud of. It is so bad.

The strength of the book is the analysis of the current situation from an economic/business viewpoint. A good number of the proposed solutions are driven by technology, which has its weak points in some places. The problems of the biggest pieces of the current mess are analyzed: hospitals, medical education, pharma companies, regulators, insurance companies.

Overall, it is a thought-provoking book, and having read this analysis, it is surprising how little of the current "healthcare is an economic problem" discussion is based on (good) economic arguments and business thinking.

I will have some more posts about this in the future.

As a side note: "The Innovators Dilemma" was also mostly analysis. However, Christensen made one prediction in the book: That electric cars will disrupt the automobile industry.
The book was published the same year the Toyota Prius came on the market in Japan, 1997, and the Prius would not be introduced to other markets until 2001.

Did anybody at GM or Chrysler read the book?