More Ideas to Lower Medical Costs

The Center for American Progress thinks we can lower medical costs about $10 billion a year by adopting four ideas:

• Instead of paying for the individual components of some procedures (e.g., a hip replacement) pay a lump sum that the hospital can distribute to the doctor, anesthesiologist, the hospital itself, etc. Medicare has been running a pilot program using this procedure for a few years and this strategy seems to be saving money.
• Invoke competition. "Medicare should immediately implement competitive bidding for durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics, and supplies nationwide, and expand the program to include laboratory tests."
• Move more fully into an electronic administrative world.
• Pay for the less expensive procedure that produces the same result as more expensive procedures.

 Will any anything further be done here? For we certainly need to do something. Look at this chart of per capita spending on health care by various countries.

Is our health any better than that of the other countries in the chart? Almost all studies say "NO".