Category: hospital chains

I've just finished the best story on health care that I expect to read this year--unless its author, Atul Gawande, decides to write another one.

In a piece in the current issue of The New Yorker, Gawande begins in an unlikely setting--at dinner on a Saturday night at The Cheesecake Factory with his two teenage daughters and three of their friends. He marvels at the restaurant. It has something for everyone--wasabi-crusted ahi tuna, and Bud Light and buffalo wings. The food is inexpensive, the place is packed, the atmosphere is Disney-like, and the staff is neatly dressed and attentive. "As for the food--can I say this without losing forever my chance of getting a reservation at Per Se?--it was delicious," Gawande writes.

Expensive restaurants serve as test kitchens for the restaurant chains, he writes, and some of the best...