Report targets health system waste

$750 billion a year

WASHINGTON — The U. S. health care system squanders $750 billion a year — roughly 30 cents of every medical dollar — through unneeded care, byzantine paperwork, fraud and other waste, the influential Institute of Medicine said Thursday in a report that ties directly into the presidential campaign.

President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney are accusing each other of trying to slash Medicare and put seniors at risk.

But the counter-intuitive finding from the report is that deep cuts are possible and a leaner system may even produce better quality.

“Health care in America presents a fundamental paradox,” said the report from an 18-member panel of prominent experts, including doctors, business people, and public officials. “... American health care is falling short on basic dimensions of quality, outcomes, costs and equity,” the report concluded.

Getting health care costs controlled is one of the keys to reducing the deficit, the biggest domestic challenge facing the next president.

The report did not lay out a policy prescription but suggested there’s plenty of room for lawmakers to find a path.

Dr. Mark Smith, president of the California HealthCare Foundation said, “The good news is that the very common notion that quality will suffer if less money is spent is simply not true. That should reassure people that the conversation about controlling costs is not necessarily about reducing quality.”