Identifying Potential Healthcare Savings
As the national healthcare debate heats up, the Center For American Progress (CAP) released a report this week identifying key strategies designed to potentially save the United States trillions of dollars in healthcare over the next decade.
From the report’s executive summary:
First, investments in health information technology and other types of health care-provider infrastructure could bring direct federal savings of $196 billion between 2010 and 2019, primarily through administrative simplification and the more productive use of time by physicians and nurses.
Second, creating insurance “exchanges,” local or national organizations designed to act as clearinghouses for health insurance policies, could foster competition and drive down administrative costs for individual and small group policies. We estimate these reduced costs could bring in additional federal revenues of $64 billion over the next 10 years.
Finally, payment system reforms based on the idea that quality care should be rewarded rather than just more and more expensive care would create incentives to improve quality and efficiency. This could save the federal government $299 billion over this period, primarily by reducing the frequency and intensity of hospitalizations.
These three sets of policies together would yield overall system savings of $1.5 trillion over the coming decade…