Sure. Eliminate fraud in government programs and eliminate pain and suffering payoffs in malpractice suits. That, alone, might well eliminate the growth as a % of GDP.
Both are one time actions if they can be done they might take a long time, but then its a 30 year one time action, the point is its not a continual process. Well to the extent these problems are getting worse and where going to continue to get worse you get an ongoing benefit of these problems not growing, but even if they are both getting worse your mostly talking about a one time benefit.
That doesn't stop the cost from growing, it reduces it by X, without eliminating the underlying trend of growing y% a year.
(note all percentage figures below used for purposes of illustrating concepts, I'm not saying they are in any way specifically accurate)
Lets say you save 20% on health care costs, and the cost was growing 3% a year, then you've bought us a little over 6 years of time but you still have the 3% growth rate.
Assuming that these factors are part of that growth rate, maybe you bring the rate down to 2%, now you have bought us a bit over 9 years, and you've also reduced the growth rate by 1% going forward, so its a very big deal, but you still haven't stopped the growth.
Not that I'm saying you have to, or even that you should (assuming your measuring in dollars, even real dollars, rather than percentage of GDP, which does at some point have to stop if only because you can't spend 100% or more of your GDP on health care), presumably as we grow richer we will spend more and more on health care, and I don't have a problem with that. To an extent I don't even have a problem with spending a larger portion of a growing GDP, as long as the growth is within reason.
Basically I'm asserting there are other reasons for cost growth, so even getting perfect on these two areas isn't going to stop the growth. |
