In a recent New Yorker essay, physician Atul Gawande examines the rising cost of health care in the U.S. and how controlling those costs is a central issue as lawmakers prepare health care overhaul legislation. Gawande compares hospitals in McAllen, Texas -- which is in the county with the lowest household income nationwide but has one of the most expensive health care markets in the U.S. -- with hospitals in other parts of the country that have lower costs but higher quality of care.

He writes, "McAllen and other cities like it have to be weaned away from their untenably fragmented, quantity-driven systems of health care, step by step," which means rewarding physicians and hospitals that "collaborate to increase prevention and the quality of care, while discouraging overtreatment, undertreatment and sheer profiteering" (Gawande, New Yorker, 6/1).

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