U.S. health care costs rise to 15.5 percent of gross domestic product

• As health care costs soar unsustainably, many employers, state Medicaid programs and the Bush administration want to force patients to pay more.
• That's a cost-control strategy that cannot work, and it is adding to the tens of millions of underinsured Americans going without needed care.
• Health spending in the United States is already enough to cover all Americans---if we better use the vast sums now wasted on ineffective care and paperwork.
• Prompt action on health costs is vital to prevent a medical meltdown when our fragile economy stumbles.
• Projected health spending of $1.9 trillion will consume 15.5 percent of gross domestic product this year---nearly double spending on education, and about 3.6 times defense spending.
• Yet those nations have universal coverage, older populations, superior health outcomes and greater patient satisfaction with care.
• We can convert our high spending from a burden to an opportunity---because about half of current spending goes to unnecessary services, needless bureaucracy, excessively high prices and other wasteful expenditures.
• We must contain costs in ways that squeeze out waste, mobilize the savings to finance high-quality care for us all and pay hospitals, doctors and other needed caregivers adequately.
• Many employers' current cost-control strategy consists of requiring higher patient payments---with the goal of spurring patients to use less care and think twice before seeking it.
• Forcing patients to pay more cannot durably contain medical costs---especially because the majority ofhighest costs are incurred by physicians' complex decisions in treating a relatively small number of seriously ill people.
• Using a single-payer plan also would facilitate negotiating lower prices with monopoly drug makers, replacing cost-shifts with genuine cost controls and achieving greater equity for patients and for caregivers.
• If most doctors concluded that certain reforms could contain cost while protecting access and quality, the general public's hesitations would likely dissipate rapidly.