President Bush’s forthcoming state of the union address will highlight strategies to reduce healthcare costs, the AP reports, particularly through transferring more financial and decision-making responsibility to consumers. Specific proposals will include allowing consumers to accumulate higher amounts in health savings accounts and to get more information about healthcare prices and provider performance. Other proposals include tax incentives to encourage people without insurance through their employers to buy their own and increased portability of healthcare insurance. Bush apparently will address the advantages of electronic health records, but it is not clear whether he will put forward new incentives to encourage their adoption.
See HFMA Views post on the state of the union address.
