Word: careful
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...Obama has barnstormed the country this year, he has been forced to talk more about the problem - a health-care inflation that could bankrupt the nation - than how much Americans would save if the broken system were fixed. From the Sunday news shows to David Letterman's overstuffed chair, Obama has warned about the rocketing increase in health-care insurance - 5.5% last year, according to one study - and promised to bend the cost curve down in the future. He has described changes to the health-care system that could bring down costs for families and long-term government deficits...
...advised Obama. "What guarantees do we have? We don't." The reason for this ambiguity can be found in the nature of what Orszag calls the "transformational" changes. Policies in both the House and Senate versions of health reform seek nothing less than a remaking of the entire health-care industry - tying payments to outcomes, encouraging providers to work together, investing heavily in research to uncover which treatments work better than others and building a network to track the performance of individual doctors and regional health networks...
...lead to a significant drop in unneeded procedures? "You need to give things a chance to change," explains Joseph Aslop, a health adviser for the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). "If you put [the pressure] on too hard too fast, things are going to break." (See 10 players in health-care reform...
...when it comes to counting savings, the Obama team has been forced to rely in public on little more than crossed fingers. Meanwhile, in the backrooms of Congress, the assumptions have become fierce points of contention, as health-care providers lobby to keep the bill from shrinking payments in a way that would further stress the system. "Cost is driving the politics of health care more than anything else," says former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle, who has been advising both Obama and the health-insurance industry. "The problem is that obviously there is a tremendous pushback by the people...
...five truths about health care in America...