Achieving a High Performance Health System

President's Message from 2003 Annual Report

Listening to patients is an important strategy for health care reform. What Americans want is not the cheapest care but the best care, plus clear information and access to health care when they need it. Not surprisingly, they prefer that someone else pay, whether employers or government. But they also want assurances that money is not being wasted on inefficient or ineffective care, excessive profits, or high administrative costs. Those demands are reasonable ones to make on a health care system that is the costliest in the world, consuming an estimated $1.4 trillion in resources in 2001.