CBO's long-term budget outlook: hearing before the Committee on the Budget, House of Representatives, One Hundred Tenth Congress, first session

Original publisher: Washington : U.S. G.P.O. : For sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O., 2008. LC Number: KF27 .B8 2007y OCLC Number: (OCoLC)218164830 Subject: Budget -- United States -- Forecasting. Excerpt: ... 11 And as the next chart shows, on average, additional spending does not generate higher or better health outcomes for beneficiaries than lower spending areas. That opens up the kind of opportunity that, for example, researchers at Dartmouth have suggested, that we could potentially reduce healthcare spending by as much as 30 percent without harming health outcomes if we can move the dark-er areas of the country towards the lighter areas and the practice norms in the lighter areas. The next chart shows you that most of the variation that occurs is not in things that we know work. For example, it is rec-ommended practice the closer you are to that vertical line, the less variation there is. The further you are, the more variation there is. It is recommended best practices. For example, to administer an aspirin for someone who experienced a heart attack upon admis-sion to a hospital, there is not very much variation in that across parts of the United States. Much less clear when an MRI should be used or other kind of imaging and diagnostic tests. There is a lot more variation in those ltboc-11. eps oc-9. eps VerDate 0ct 09 2002 17: 54 Mar 17, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 J: DOCS HEARINGS 110TH 110-26 HBU347.000 HBUD1 PsN: DICK ltb