[joe_the_user]

Uh,

The article's headline is sort-of plausible.

The article's body is a pathetic absurdity. An massive integrated, interdependent industry can't be plausibly compared to the motley collection of itinerant farmers roaming America in 1900. I'd laugh if this article wasn't such a pathetic failure to address the oncoming gigantic failure that is the looming health care bill. As it is, I want to cry...

Edit: The history of agriculture improvement are interesting. But cryingly inapplicable - health care processes are absolutely not the product of the decisions of individual health care providers but the massively complex interactions of multiple sub-industries, regulations, etc. Sheesh.

[lastheme]

I don't know that I'd disagree. In its current state, I'm afraid there are too many pressures on each individual actor for them to try new things.

The advantages in agriculture were that they were suspicious of trying new things, but once they did they demonstrated profit advantages. I have more trouble seeing how the pilot programs the article mentions would profit individual practitioners, or how insurance companies would provide the same kind of demand signals that direct consumers would.