Economic Program | Report

Bending the Curve: 12 Ways Health Reform Will Tackle Runaway Costs

by Anne Kim and David Kendall

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This new report looks at the cost-control measures in the bills now before Congress and finds that the measures in these bill will, in fact, “bend the curve.”

We find that over the next 15 years:

  • American businesses will collectively spend $684 billion less on health insurance premiums than they would have otherwise.
  • Workers will spend $190 billion less on premiums.
  • The rate of growth in Medicare spending will slow by more than one percentage point.

We also identify and explain 12 specific measures of cost containment, including spending less money to fix treatment mistakes (warranties and error reporting), steering people from emergency rooms to routine care (individual mandate and primary care access) and taking the guesswork out of treatment decisions (comparative effectiveness research).

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