THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THE THIRD WAY ADVOCATES:

It turns out that there is a way to control health spending: clobber the economy. When unemployment rises, people lose health insurance. They see doctors less often; they put off elective surgery; they cut back on drugs. Even people with insurance behave similarly, because their pay may be down, they worry about job security or they want to avoid out-of-pocket costs for deductibles or co-payments. Of course, almost no one advocates this as a deliberate policy. But it does seem to work. Call it the Neanderthal Cure to Health Costs.

Just last week, new government figures provided fresh evidence. In 2010, U.S. health spending rose a modest 3.9 percent, about equal to 2009's increase of 3.8 percent. These were the lowest annual increases in the half-century of government estimates. As a result, health spending has stabilized as a share of the economy (gross domestic product). It was 17.9 percent of GDP in both years. In 2010, this amounted to $2.6 trillion, roughly $8,400 for each of the 309 million Americans.

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