More than a few old-school types have done their best to belittle Oakland A's GM Billy Beane for being the subject of the book Moneyball. He was reviled for saying that there may be a better, more efficient way of running a baseball team, especially when money is more limited for you than it is for your competitors. And those are just ideas about baseball, imagine what would happen if they were questions of life and death. Beane should probably brace himself because now he's turning his reformist eye to the world of health care. He's teamed up with Newt Gingrich and John Kerry, a trio previously reserved for "walking into a bar" jokes than policy reform, to write an op-ed for the New York Times calling for data-driven, evidence-based methods to cut costs and improve health care.
America's health care system behaves like a hidebound, tradition-based ball club that chases after aging sluggers and plays by the old rules: we pay too much and get too little in return.I can only hope this leads to stats like VORC (Value Over Replacement Cardiologist) and third-order lives saved, which takes into account how sick the patient was and how much blood you got on your white jacket.
The potential problems? If your doctor gets too expensive, you can't just trade him for three recent medical school graduates who project well. And I can already hear the pundits who claim Beane doesn't know what he's talking about, no matter what the numbers say Dr. Barnes is a "gamer" who just knows how to save lives.
