Yesterday, the American Medical Association (AMA) and five other major groups representing doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and union members delivered a letter to President Obama pledging to cut the U.S. growth rate for healthcare spending by 1.5 percent each year from 2010 through 2019 [1]. The coalition’s efforts are intended to supplement upcoming legislation aimed at decreasing healthcare costs for families, businesses and the government.

The savings — an estimated $2 trillion over the next decade — would come from changes in the public-private partnership and include:

• Administrative standardization, simplification and transparency.
• Aligning quality and efficiency incentives among providers to reduce over- and under-use of healthcare.
• Encouraging coordinated care and adherence to evidence-based best practices and therapies.
• Reducing the cost of doing business by developing technology and regulatory reform.

Although the proposed health expenditure savings is small, experts say it’s significant [2]. The very fact that health industry leaders have stepped forward to voluntarily restrain costs is itself encouraging; these are the same groups that opposed the healthcare reforms proposed by President Clinton in the 1990s.