Obama: Waste In Health Care Spending Needs To Be Eliminated

December 1, 2008 10:06 a.m. EST

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - With more Americans foregoing needed medical care because they lack health insurance, or the money to use it if they have it, the call for health care reform is high and it is one of the key areas that President Elect Barack Obama has promised to focus on.

And reforming the nation's health care system should result in more people getting better care at a reduced cost because there is so much waste in the health care system critics say.

The United States spends more money per capita on medical care than any other nation, and yet it ranks 48th in life expectancy, 29th in infant mortality and last out of 19 industrialized nations in avoiding preventable deaths.

Some of that money, about $450 billion, is spent treating heart disease, with much of that going to keep patients alive who have had heart attacks, strokes or aneurysms that would have killed them in the past.

But critics say that eliminating the underlying causes of those diseases, including smoking, diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure, would bring the price tag of treating heart disease down in the long run.

And those are just some of the examples.

Eliminating waste in health care spending is one of President Elect Barack Obama's priorities.

In his third press conference since winning the election, President Elect Obama said last week that he, and his staff, would ferret out wasteful spending wherever it was.

"Just because a program, a special interest tax break or corporate subsidy is hidden in this year's budget does not mean that it will survive the next," Obama said, according to a transcript of his remarks. "The old ways of Washington simply can't meet the challenges of today and tomorrow."

He said his administration had an "opportunity to improve the health care that Americans rely on and to bring down the costs that taxpayers, businesses and families have to pay."