Top Ten HealthCare Quotes of 2012

Editor’s Note: Dan Munro is a contributing editor to Forbes.com.  His columns are collected under the heading, “The HealthCare Compass.

Editor’s Note: Dan Munro is a contributing editor to Forbes.com.  His columns are collected under the heading, “The HealthCare Compass.

For those who thought the Mayan’s might provide some relief to our healthcare woes there is clearly some bad news. We still have The Grand U.S. Healthcare Reformation to deal with. Before we get to the road less traveled ahead, however, this seemed like a good time to take one last glance in the rear-view mirror for a sampling of soundbites we heard in 2012. Here are ten quotes – and one bonus track – that made me grab a keyboard.

1. “Just because I have a fitness app on my phone doesn’t make me an athlete.”
   Dr. Harry Greenspun – Senior Advisor, Healthcare Transformation and Technology at Deloitte – mHealth Summit – December (video here)
2. “How many businesses do you know that want to cut their revenue in half? That’s why the healthcare system won’t change the healthcare system.”
   Rick Scott – Governor of Florida (as quoted by Vinod Khosla) – Rock Health Innovation Summit – August (video here)
3. “Doctors can be replaced by software – 80% of them can. I’d much rather have a good machine learning system diagnose my disease than the median or average doctor.”
   Vinod Khosla – Rock Health Innovation Summit – August (video here)
4. “15% – 20% of care is ‘clinically inappropriate.’”
   Dr. Brent James – Chief Quality Officer at Intermountain Healthcare – Keynote at the iHT2 Health IT Summit – November
5. “One of three American healthcare dollars is wasted and for the past decade, all wage increases have been absorbed by healthcare costs.”
   Don Berwick – Former CMS Administrator – Keynote at the 9th Annual SAS Health Care and Life Sciences Executive Conference – May
6. “When an employer sits down with his health care providers – the broker, the health plan, the physician, the hospital, the drug and device firms – everyone in the room wants it to cost more – and they’re all positioned to make that happen.”
   Lynn Jennings – CEO of WeCare TLC –  Smart Healthcare Without A Smartphone – June
7. “We applaud the sequencing of the genome – but not life.”
   will.i.am – The WWW Conference – September
8. “Type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes will affect half of Americans in the next eight years at a projected cost of $3.3 trillion.”
   Dr. Dean Ornish – Huffington Post – August
9. “30,000 Medicare recipients die each year from care they didn’t need.”
   Shannon Brownlee – Acting Director, New America Foundation HealthPolicy Program – Escape Fire Documentary – October
10. “I don’t blame anybody – they’re just doing what makes sense and we have to change what makes sense.”
    Don Berwick – Former CMS Administrator – Escape Fire Documentary – October

Bonus Track:

1. “Digital Health feels like the PC industry in the early ’80′s.”
   John Sculley – Former CEO of Apple and PepsiCo – Digital Health Summit – January

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