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WHITE HOUSE: $700B Wasted

"Estimates suggest that as much as $700 billion a year in healthcare costs do not improve health outcomes. They occur because we pay for more care rather than better care. We need to be moving towards a system in which doctors and hospitals have incentives to provide the care that makes you better, rather than the care that just results in more tests and more days in [the] hospital.”

—Peter Orszag, Director, White House Office of Management and Budget (in a May 2009 interview with NPR)

" … up to one-third of the over $2 trillion that we now spend annually on healthcare is squandered on unneces-sary hospitalizations; unneeded and often redundant tests; unproven treat- ments; overpriced, cutting-edge drugs; devices no better than the less expen- sive products they replaced; and end-of-life care that brings neither comfort care nor cure."

—Jack Wennberg, Dartmouth Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences [From "Where can $700 billion in waste be cut annually from the U.S. healthcare system?" by Robert Kelley, Vice President, Healthcare Analytics, Thomson Reuters.]