Presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) outlined last Thursday steps for what she says will cut runaway healthcare spending by one third.
In a speech last Thursday at George Washington University, Clinton said there are three parts to her approach to healing the U.S. healthcare system:
• lowering costs for everyone
• improving quality for everyone
• insuring everyone
"…no matter where I go or with whom I talk… I hear growing concern about the crisis in our healthcare system - exploding costs, declining coverage and shortcoming in care and prevention," Clinton said. "I think we finally have a recognition that everyone sees there is an economic imperative to rein in costs."
"We spend 16 percent of our gross domestic product - $2 trillion - on healthcare," said Clinton. "And by 2016, health costs are scheduled to exceed $4 trillion, or almost 20 percent of the gross domestic product. That means that within less than 10 years, 20 cents out of every dollar produced in America will be spent on healthcare. No other country spends more than 12 percent, a difference of more than $500 billion. All other wealthy countries spend even less."
Clinton attributed 30 percent of the rise in U.S. healthcare spending to the doubling of obesity among adults over the past 20 years, increasing the prevalence of preventable diseases such as diabetes, asthma and heart disease. "If obesity had remained at 1990 levels, we would be spending 10 percent less on healthcare today - a savings of $220 billion," Clinton said.
She also cited the U.S. for the highest administrative costs in the world - one in four healthcare dollars.
If elected president, Clinton said, her plan for recovery would include emphasis on paying doctors for preventative medicine, upgrading from paper to electronic records, streamlining care for the chronically ill, providing universal healthcare coverage, improving quality of care with an independent public-private Best Practices Institute, reining in prescription drug costs and establishing medical malpractice reform.