Health Care Expert: Controlling costs will be the challenge

Indiana University News Room
October 12, 2010

Forty years ago, government officials worried that America's spending on health care had reached a level that simply wasn't sustainable: just over 5 percent of the nation's gross domestic product.

"We're now at 16 percent of GDP, and it's anticipated to go to 20 percent by 2015 or 2020," said Wendy Everett, president of the New England Healthcare Institute. "It's a classic frog-in-boiling-water situation."

But getting control of health-care costs is no easy task, said Everett, who has dedicated her career to improving the quality and affordability of health care. As the debate this year over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act made clear, there's no consensus on how to rein in spending.

"I think we're absolutely going in the right direction" with health-care reform, Everett said. "But it's going to be tough to control costs."

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