In the United States, per capita spending on health care is more than double that in most other high-income, industrialized countries, while performance on health outcome measures in the U.S. lags many lower-spending nations. A New England Journal of Medicine Perspective by Gerard F. Anderson, Ph.D., and Amber Willink of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Commonwealth Fund's Robin Osborn examines two effective cost-containment strategies from abroad: Germany’s bundled payment system and Japan’s volume-driven pricing adjustment.
Noting that the U.S. is just beginning to experiment with ways to promote high-value care, the authors urge policymakers and health system leaders to do more to study and adopt cost-containment strategies used successfully in other countries.