HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, along with Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas (R), last week announced a new pilot designed to promote the medical home. The three-year program is based on a program in Vermont and will provide financial incentives for primary care doctors to spend more time with patients with chronic conditions, keeping them healthy and coordinating their specialist care, in the hopes that it will cut down costly emergency department visits.

Any effort that could help us cut health spending and simultaneously improve quality is a good one. According to a Health Affairs analysis this week, if the growth rate in U.S. health care spending continues, it’s going to eat up personal income and economic resources.

Heck, it might eat up everything.  Even if the growth rate slowed to a pace of just 1 percent faster than per capita growth in GDP, more than half of any increase in personal income would go to health care over the next 75 years. Sobering. We’ll have to commute to work in ambulances.

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