What is consumer-driven health care?
There are many definitions of consumer driven health care, but most simply it means that patients will behave as medical consumers. The patients will be the ones deciding how their health care dollars will be spent-not doctors, employers, insurance companies, or government. In her book Consumer-Driven Health Care, Regina Herzlinger provides a good description: Consumer-driven health care is fundamentally about empowering health care consumers-all of us-with control, choice, and information. Consumer control will reward innovative insurers and providers for creating the higher-quality, lower-cost services we want and deserve. In this consumer-driven system, government will protect us with financial assistance and oversight, not micromanagement.
