Broad assault coming on health costs ... or else.(Medicare and the Budget)

Publication: Medicine & Health

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COPYRIGHT 2005 Thomson Financial Inc.

Neither Medicare nor the American health-care system as a whole will look fiscally sustainable in a few decades unless a variety of cost-containing, value-producing changes come into play. That was the message of an expert panel of economists Jan. 31 at the World Health Care Congress of health-care businesspeople in Washington, DC.

What does that mean to providers and others with a stake in Medicare? "Big changes are coming," said Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, "No matter what you might think at the moment."

While most current talk is about how to ensure that Social Security has adequate financing, in fact the most difficult fiscal issue is health care, said the director of Congress' non-partisan economic-analysis arm. As...

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