Whatever money is saved through short-term restraint will be lost in panicked spending down the road. That's been the lesson of the past 20 years. The challenge is to bend the cost curve permanently while making the system perform better. What health value do we achieve for what we spend? Improving value for money will require governments, organizations and practitioners to leave their comfort zone of conventional practice.

Through Canadian and international perspectives, Bending the Cost Curve in Health Care explores the management of growing health costs in an extraordinarily complex arena. The book moves beyond previous debates, agreeing that while efficiencies and better value for money may yet be found, more fundamental reforms to the management and delivery of health services are essential prerequisites to bending the cost curve in the long run. While there is considerable controversy over direction and details of change, there also remains the challenge of getting agreement on the values or principles that would guide the reshaping of the policies, the structures, and the regulatory environment of health care in Canada. Leading experts from around the world representing a range of disciplines and professional backgrounds come together to organize and define the problems faced by policy-makers. Case studies from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, the Nordic countries, and industrialized Asian countries such as Taiwan offer useful reform experiences for provincial governments in Canada. Finally, common Canadian cost factors, such as pharmaceuticals and technology, and paying the health workforce, are explored. This book is the first volume in The Johnson-Shoyama Series on Public Policy, published by the University of Toronto Press in association with the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, an interdisciplinary centre for research, teaching, and executive training with campuses at the Universities of Regina and Saskatchewan.

Through Canadian and international perspectives, Bending the Cost Curve in Health Care explores the management of growing health costs in an extraordinarily complex arena. The book moves beyond previous debates, agreeing that while efficiencies and better value for money may yet be found, more fundamental reforms to the management and delivery of health services are essential prerequisites to bending the cost curve in the long run. While there is considerable controversy over direction and details of change, there also remains the challenge of getting agreement on the values or principles that would guide the reshaping of the policies, the structures, and the regulatory environment of health care in Canada. Leading experts from around the world representing a range of disciplines and professional backgrounds come together to organize and define the problems faced by policy-makers. Case studies from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, the Nordic countries, and industrialized Asian countries such as Taiwan offer useful reform experiences for provincial governments in Canada. Finally, common Canadian cost factors, such as pharmaceuticals and technology, and paying the health workforce, are explored. This book is the first volume in The Johnson-Shoyama Series on Public Policy, published by the University of Toronto Press in association with the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, an interdisciplinary centre for research, teaching, and executive training with campuses at the Universities of Regina and Saskatchewan.

EMPLOYERS ARE DESPERATE TO FIND A SOLUTION Employers are desperate to find a way to make employee benefits affordable, competitive, beneficial, and just work. Unfortunately, it's just not working. Health insurance is usually the #2 largest expense on an employer's books (right after salaries!) and most treat it like overhead. Employees are unhealthy, costs go up, and you wonder how you can continue to afford benefits from year to year while staying in business. WHAT IF SOMEONE FIGURED IT OUT?What if instead, you were able to use employee benefits as an incentive to drive employee engagement, improved health, and increased profits - all while achieving high performance without paying any more than you already are? What if employees could pay less, the company could save millions, and employees could have access to expanded health coverage all with paying probably less than what you are today? Impossible?Dr. Larson has rallied key talent more than once to fundamentally change the way healthcare is managed inside of an organization. More than once, Larson has helped put the pieces in place to build strong partnerships with employees, carriers, vendors, and others to save millions on health insurance for plans, reduce costs for employees, expand coverage for participants and families, engage employees to change behavior, and reform healthcare at the local level. He shares the philosophy, foundation, perspectives and know-how in this book.WHAT IF THE SOLUTION IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU?The solutions to our healthcare dilemma in the U.S. has been right here in front of us all along. Unfortunately, we've been focusing on the things that matter least as solutions to the questions that matter the most. Waiting on the government to find a solution through healthcare reform will not bring the cure to our healthcare epidemic. Healthcare reform is local - specific to our employees and our own workforce. What we do within the walls of our own company will have a far greater impact on our costs than anything Congress or anyone else can do. It's up to us to find, develop and implement those solutions to maintain and develop the solutions that will work for our organization and our people. Within this book, Dr. Larson shares his perspectives of what these tools, processes, and functions are that can make the biggest difference. With decades of experience in HR, benefits, and human development, Dr. Larson has managed or consulted on benefits for multiple entities throughout the course of the past decades and understands what works when it comes to making the changes needed to affect health, outcomes, and costs. This book is a compendium of those resources he has utilized in setting up and revising benefits programs through his experiences. He shares the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to programs and tools. This is not meant to be another textbook on wellness and healthcare. There are several of those books on the market written by people who wrote them based on theory, research and OTHER peoples' stories. Instead, this is a first-hand perspective written from one well-experienced practitioner's view of what works. This book is the structured sharing of best practices from someone who has been there, done that. It is not filled with links to outside research and data points but is instead filled with guidance, perspectives, and lessons learned from years of practical experience and proven results. Want another research book that will sit on the shelf unread? Go find another book. Need something with real ideas, practical concepts, and that is written directly with a disruptive "no holds barred" approach that you'll turn to time and time again? This is the one to drop a dollar on.

The United States has the highest per capita spending on health care of any industrialized nation but continually lags behind other nations in health care outcomes including life expectancy and infant mortality. National health expenditures are projected to exceed $2.5 trillion in 2009. Given healthcare's direct impact on the economy, there is a critical need to control health care spending. According to The Health Imperative: Lowering Costs and Improving Outcomes, the costs of health care have strained the federal budget, and negatively affected state governments, the private sector and individuals. Healthcare expenditures have restricted the ability of state and local governments to fund other priorities and have contributed to slowing growth in wages and jobs in the private sector. Moreover, the number of uninsured has risen from 45.7 million in 2007 to 46.3 million in 2008. The Health Imperative: Lowering Costs and Improving Outcomes identifies a number of factors driving expenditure growth including scientific uncertainty, perverse economic and practice incentives, system fragmentation, lack of patient involvement, and under-investment in population health. Experts discussed key levers for catalyzing transformation of the delivery system. A few included streamlined health insurance regulation, administrative simplification and clarification and quality and consistency in treatment. The book is an excellent guide for policymakers at all levels of government, as well as private sector healthcare workers.