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February 20, 2013

Reengineering US Health Care

Author Affiliations

Author Affiliations: Department of Internal Medicine, University of California, San Francisco (Dr Hoffman); Office of the Provost and Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Perelman School of Medicine and Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (Dr Emanuel).

JAMA. 2013;309(7):661-662. doi:10.1001/jama.2012.214571

In August 1910, The New York Times published an article about Paul Ehrlich, the Nobel Prize−winning German scientist, who had discovered a compound to treat syphilis—the “magic bullet.”1 In August 2010, The New York Times published an article about Americans avoiding basic and necessary health care because it is too expensive.2 One hundred years after discovery of the first treatment for syphilis and nearly 3 years after passage of the Affordable Care Act, the core health policy question remains the same: is there a single solution to improve the quality of US health care while simultaneously controlling costs?

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