"Regina "Regi" E. Herzlinger" (born c.1944) is an American businessperson and academic. She is the Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (HBS) where she teaches on the Master of Business Administration programme. Herzlinger was the first woman to obtain tenure or become a chair at HBS. She has also been the first woman on several company boards. Her approach has been described as Fiscal conservatism/fiscally conservative.

More Regina Herzlinger on Wikipedia.

American industry spends a lot of time on cost accounting, and they do so because it gives them so much more control. But the health system rewards inefficiency. It's not a competitive system where the supplier names the price -- as a doctor, you can't determine the price, Medicare quotes it for you.... When the one saying it is as big a gorilla as Medicare, you say, 'I'll take it.'

The big pharmaceutical companies are set up to handle blockbusters with their massive sales forces, and I don't think they have done anything to really address this future in any useful way.

I think we're going to get there soon, not eventually. The major reason is, most people agree that employer support for health insurance is just not going to continue.

If you are an insurer and can attract the 80 percent of patients who account for 20 percent of the costs, you'll make money, ... The other way around, you'll lose it.

Bush missed an historic opportunity to finally bring the U.S. universal health care, appropriately consumer-based, one that holds great promise for controlling costs.