Summing Up

Abstract

On concluding its year-long study of rising health care costs, the President’s Council on Wage and Price Stability issued a strong challenge to the private sector:

The American people generally are becoming increasingly unwilling to devote an ever larger portion of their personal income to health care. Although the full extent of the cost escalation has been somewhat hidden through the mechanism of third-party payments, taxes, payroll deductions, and direct employer and union payments to insurers, the day is coming, and coming fast we were told, when the people are going to discover how much they must increasingly sacrifice simply in order to maintain the status quo in health care services. When that day comes, we believe the people of this country will turn to the federal government and demand that it solve the problem.... Absent any major changes in the structure of the medical care system between now and then, the federal government will step in, and when that happens, we are going to be faced with a permanent problem which will defy solution. This does not have to happen. We are convinced that an alternative to federal control of the health care system is available if promptly seized.... That alternative is a concerted and united effort on the part of industry and labor to control costs.... But make no mistake about it, the private sector must step up its efforts manyfold; it must apply the full measure of ingenuity and management skills which are so characteristic of the American system.¹