Jamie Heywood – What's more important in healthcare: cost or value?
Jamie Heywood – What's more important in healthcare: cost or value?
Jamie Heywood launched with a photograph of his brother, Stephen, who died of ALS, and the extraordinary amount of money that was spent totreat him and keep him alive as long as possible. “Why would you want to spend less on health? Like, do we talk about wanting to spend less on entertainment?” Said Jamie. “Do we talk about wanting to spend less on cars or transportation or housing? It's a dumb, dumb question. What would be more important than health? Right? So the idea that we're talking about cost or the percentage is really stupid. It has nothing to do with what we spend... Stephen, in the work I did in my foundation and caring for him through his ALS, we probably spent $50 million trying to make him live longer. And I think we could have and should have spent more. I'm very critical of how we spent the money. Whether we got value from that.”
Jamie compared the cost versus value of a Lamborghini and a tractor which both cost $200,000. Which is important, and which delivers value? He then compared two drugs – one that costs $84,000 for a full course, and one that costs $54,000. The first one, he says, dramatically improves a patient’ s life; the second barely has an impact. He says that we need to ask the question: What is the right thing to do? And how do we measure this? ... Let's figure out how we generate value for every individual that receives care, at the time of care.”