The Validity of “ Cheap , Fast , Good : Pick Any Two ” in Evaluating Healthcare Systems
the quality was significantly higher . It should be noted that each one has a very limited menu , far narrower than most other restaurants . They have each specialized in a specific niche , and have managed to fill that role well ( e . g ., burritos , chicken sandwiches , two regional burger chains ). These highly specialized restaurants thrive because they seem to have limited their menus by design , and then achieved that precarious balance between cheap , fast , and good . The fact that so few other restaurants can be cited as achieving this balance demonstrates the difficulty in doing so , especially on a large scale .
With a greater understanding of how cheap , fast , and good interact in the computer model , next is the examination of how they interact at a country level , in health care . Table 2 contains the scores for each OECD country . Population numbers were obtained from Wikipedia ( 2019 ) from the entry for each country . Of note , several countries ( highlighted ) only have scores for cheap or fast ; this is because the missing attribute was not found in the sources used for the other countries , and a reasonable comparison could not be made .
With these scores in place , the next step was to draw a full comparison , as previously discussed . These results are found in Table 3 . Of note , Iceland , Ireland , and Norway do not appear on this table ; that is because , due to their low scores in two areas , the triangle for them would be undefined . 4 Of special note , several countries scored over 50 in 2 areas ; these are highlighted in
4 No triangle can have one side longer than the sum of the other two sides .
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blue ( Good & Fast ), or purple ( Cheap & Good ). Notably , no country scored highly in all three areas , although Hungary and Israel both scored above 40 and below 90 for all three , demonstrating the closest balance of any .
5 . Conclusion
Both the computer model and triangulation of health care systems successfully tackle some of the difficulties in achieving and maintaining a stable market while attempting to find a balance between cheap , fast , and good . Only a limited number of providers who deliberately fill a very narrow niche or on a smaller scale can apparently achieve this balance . Of the 9 countries who had balance in 2 attributes , only 2 ( Germany , Italy ) have populations exceeding 20 million , which illustrates the difficulties in scale in addressing cheap , fast , and good .