O'Keryon: What fascinates me is, you know, at some point in the past, I don't know when it, this change maybe in the 80s or 70s, the most effective non-invasive technique a doctor had available was next. And then that changed. We got a whole set of new techniques, MRI and CAT scans and other things, and they keep getting better. But I'm curious the pace of that. It's actually driven more, I think, by intellectual curiosity and in an environment such as BJC healthcare where we are affiliated with one of the leading medical schools in the world,.
Steven Lipstein, President and CEO of BJC HealthCare--a $3 billion hospital system in St. Louis, Missouri--talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the economics of hospitals. They discuss pricing, the advantages and disadvantages of specialization in modern medical care, and culture and governance of non-profit hospitals vs. for-profit hospitals. At the end they talk about the positives and negatives of a national health board patterned after the Federal Reserve.