Word: careful
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...even clearer on Tuesday, with the release of the annual report of the Medicare trust fund. The trustees projected that the Medicare Part A (or hospital) trust fund will become insolvent by 2017, which is two years earlier than previously estimated. (Read "The Fire This Time: Is This Health Care's Moment...
...specifics or any means of enforcement, the White House was so eager to embrace the voluntary pledge of health-industry leaders to curb its costs by $2 trillion over the next 10 years. "This is a historic day, a watershed event in the long and elusive quest for health-care reform," President Obama declared. On Tuesday, Obama followed up that photo op by meeting with business executives who have been at the forefront of holding down the costs of their employees' medical coverage, and in the process making those workers healthier. "Now, if we can do that in individual companies...
...actually bring medical spending under control? Health-care experts say it is possible to cut it significantly without reducing quality. Indeed, they say more efficient medicine would be better medicine. By some estimates, as much as $700 billion of the $2.3 trillion that we spend on medical care each year is on unnecessary treatment that is not doing anything to make us healthier - and could even be hurting us. Obama Administration budget director Peter Orszag notes that all sides now are starting to agree that four big changes are needed...
...Comparative-effectiveness research to evaluate what works best and what doesn't: "It is stunning how little evaluation we do in the U.S. health-care system," Orszag says. Most of what is done is testing new pharmaceuticals against a placebo, he notes. "It's not done Drug A vs. Drug B vs. some procedure, let alone procedures head to head...
...financial incentives: Providers get paid according to how much care they provide, rather than how good it is. If a botched surgery lands you back in the hospital, for instance, that means more profit for the health-care industry. "They are often penalized if they provide more-efficient care, if they reduce readmission rates," Orszag says, adding that changing that kind of perverse incentive will be a major focus of health-care reform...