Transcript
MARK MCCLELLAN: Health care reform is clearly an important health issue, an important public health issue, but this report emphasizes that it is also a first-order economic issue. Health care is such an important part of our economy and it's such an important part of our fiscal outlook. I think I've heard from both Christina Romer who will be speaking shortly, and David Cutler one of our panelists, that if you're an economist working on public policy, sooner or later you're going to become a health economist and I think this event reinforces that. I think that's true for Doug as well.
Because of the health care importance in the overall economic outlook, reform that has a positive impact on health and on slowing cost growth in economic terms, reforms that increase the efficiency of the value of health care can also have a significant impact on the economy, and vice versa, failing that or acting in a way that compounds the inefficiencies in the cost growth in our health care system could have a significant negative impact.
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