David Blumenthal- Reducing Health Care Costs

A new Alliance for Health Reform video features David Blumenthal, president of the Commonwealth Fund, and the Obama administration's former point person on health information technology, arguing that solving the health care cost problem requires improving performance. He offers an example of a Medicare demonstration project at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he says the system reduced mortality by 7 or 8 percent and also brought down costs by focusing on the highest cost, sickest patients. "Here you had fewer deaths for less money."