A majority of employers (69 percent) think healthcare reform will lead to higher costs for benefits. An even larger percentage (71 percent) think it will lead to higher costs for U.S. healthcare services overall, found a recent survey conducted by Towers Watson and the National Business Group on Health (NBGH).
A review of studies by researchers with the NBGH and the Pacific Group on Health in San Francisco concurred that current reform proposals do not address all leading causes of healthcare waste. The report, Better U.S. Health Care at Lower Cost, listed: providing unnecessary services, using inefficient delivery methods, lack of price competition, excessive administrative costs in the provider and insurance sectors, and "missing opportunities to lower net spending via illness and injury prevention."
The report highlights specific tools that can help trim waste from the system, including adoption of electronic health records (an estimated $77 billion annually), expanding the availability of quality end-of-life and palliative care for serious advanced illness ($6 billion), and motivating healthcare providers to attain certain performance benchmarks, which would also reduce mortality rates. You can find the report at www.issues.org/26.2/milstein.html.