Cost Control — Time to Get Serious

Although everyone seems to agree that controlling health care costs is no less critical a need than improving access to health care, the evidence suggests that cost control is not being seriously confronted. The pertinent committees in Congress, as well as key government agencies, are still flitting around the edge of tough proposals, evading the enormous difficulties of managing costs.Consider the first shot across the bow of serious cost reform, conveyed in an April 29, 2009, report of the Senate Finance Committee. Comparative-effectiveness research, it said, is a fine idea, but whatever “entity” carries it out “should be prohibited . . .