Such testing is estimated to cost about $30 billion a year, or more than 6 percent of the nation's total health-care spending.

To make employees more careful about their health-care spending, the city also increased the deductible amount they must pay.

It also opposed his call for a national limit on health-care spending.

And it involves money, in the ever-deepening well of health-care spending.

Hospital costs are the largest ingredient, about 45 percent, in the nation's health-care spending.

The effect on the nation's total health-care spending, currently about $700 billion, would be small.

But managed care by itself cannot cap the growth of health-care spending.

And the medical costs of obesity are enormous approximately 10 percent of our nation's health-care spending.

Although drugs consume only 6 percent to 8 percent of the nation's health-care spending, prices have been rising much faster than general inflation.

The state introduced managed care for Medicaid, sharply cutting the growth of health-care spending.