Variations in California hospital regions: another wake-up call for sleeping policymakers

The paper by John Wennberg and colleagues poses a renewed challenge to federal and state policymakers to handle the taxpayers' hard-earned money responsibly--a task both have shunned for many decades. With the federal government's deficit growing apace and California state's budget, properly accounted for, in deep deficit as well, health policymakers can sustain the inefficiencies now apparent in our health care system only by pricing more and more low-income Americans out of health care. One could question the ethics of that approach.