Cutting the nation's health care costs

In 1984 health care expenditures totaled $387.4 billion, and may reach $757.9 billion by 1990. The following factors and their annual cost overrun price tags are the prime forces behind this rapidly growing expense: professional liability insurance, litigations, and defensive medicine, $30 billion; hospital administrative management and employee excess, $6.3 billion; community hospital profits, $8.3 billion; oversupply and duplication of drugs and drug sundries, $22.5 billion; the oversupply of physician specialists, at least $10 to $15 billion; unsolicited physician interpretation of routine, unsophisticated tests, $13.2 billion; and, finally, an American lifestyle adversely affected by illicit drugs ($60 billion), alcohol ($117 billion), and automobile accidents ($43.3 billion), for a total cost of $220 billion yearly.The intent of this article is to educate the public in an open and responsible fashion, and to demonstrate that the health care industry in the United States can save approximately $334.0 billion yearly.