Health Care Cost Containment

The Administration`s proposals to reform the U.S. health care system sought to provide for universal health insurance coverage while containing the growth of health care spending. This paper focuses on the latter issue and discusses the ability of regulatory and market-oriented reforms to achieve health care cost containment from several angles: an international comparison of national cost containment measures, a review of past cost containment efforts in the United States, and a discussion of the estimated effects on health care costs of alternative proposals to reform the U.S. health care system.