Study: Reform bills could save health care dollars

The Los Angeles Times: "National healthcare legislation in Congress could slow the growth of medical costs, allowing employers to create 250,000 to 400,000 new jobs a year over the next decade, economists from Harvard University and USC are predicting. ... Specifically, healthcare savings could be achieved through proposals for greater competition in insurance markets, better coordination of care and shrinking administrative expenses, they said in a report to be released today. With those changes, employers could then reallocate money now spent on ever-growing premiums to other business priorities."

Critics argue that the health bill would "drive up costs by imposing billions of dollars in new taxes and penalties, killing jobs and hurting the economy as the financial burden of healthcare shifts to employers and workers. One analysis from the conservative Heritage Foundation determined that higher taxes levied on the wealthiest Americans -- a proposal in the healthcare bill approved by the House in November -- would eliminate more than 450,000 jobs over the next decade" (Helfand, 1/8).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.