Report: U.S. health care system wastes $750 billion a year

WASHINGTON — The U.S. health care system squanders $750 billion a year — roughly 30 cents of every medical dollar — through unneeded care, byzantine paperwork, fraud and other waste, the influential Institute of Medicine said Thursday in a report that ties directly into the presidential campaign.

President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney are accusing each other of trying to slash Medicare and put seniors at risk.

But the counter-intuitive finding from the report is that deep cuts are possible without rationing, and a leaner system may even produce better quality.

“Health care in America presents a fundamental paradox,” said the report from an 18-member panel of prominent experts, including doctors, business people, and public officials.

“The past 50 years have seen an explosion in biomedical knowledge, dramatic innovation in therapies and surgical procedures, and management of conditions that previously were fatal ...

“Yet, American health care is falling short on basic dimensions of quality, outcomes, costs and equity,” the report concluded.

If banking worked like health care, ATM transactions would take days, the report said. If home building were like health care, carpenters, electricians and plumbers would work from different blueprints and hardly talk to each other.

If shopping were like health care, prices would not be posted and could vary widely within the same store, depending on who was paying.

If airline travel were like health care, individual pilots would be free to design their own preflight safety checks — or not perform one at all.

How much is $750 billion? The one-year estimate of health care waste is equal to more than 10 years of Medicare cuts in Obama’s health care law.

It’s more than the Pentagon budget. It’s more than enough to care for the uninsured.

Getting health care costs better controlled is one of the keys to reducing the deficit, the biggest domestic challenge facing the next president.

The report did not lay out a policy prescription for Medicare and Medicaid, but suggested that there is plenty of room for lawmakers to find a path.

Obama and Romney agree that there has to be a limit to Medicare spending, but they differ on how to get that done. Obama would rely on a powerful board to cut payments to service providers, while gradually changing how hospitals and doctors are paid to reward results instead of volume.

Romney would limit the amount of money future retirees can get from the government for medical insurance, relying on the private market to find an efficient solution.

Each accuses of the other of jeopardizing the well-being of senior citizens.