The Hill News

American health care spending continues to rise, and by 2019, health care costs will approach $4.5 trillion â€" nearly 20 percent of our projected GDP. With this spending trajectory and our significant debt in mind, serious deficit reform must tackle rising health care costs, particularly in Medicare and Medicaid, and do so by sustainably removing costs from the system. 

Traditionally, cost-cutting efforts in health care have involved tweaking eligibility, increasing out-of-pocket costs, and squeezing reimbursement to providers of health care goods and services. Though these actions may achieve a small favorable score from the Congressional Budget Office, they fail to contain costs over the long term. They also often create other problems, primarily because they address symptoms of the problem in our system and shift them to someone else instead of addressing the source of the problems directly. 

It’s like rearranging the deck chairs on the Tit! anic to make it harder to reach the lifeboats while doing little to alleviate the need to abandon ship.

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