Cost Containment
2 As a program to contain health care expenditures, health
planning was a failure (at least in the judgement of many in
Congress)
2 Efforts to contain costs increased continued with price freezes
during the Nixon administration and with suggestions to
control hospital prices followed by a voluntary restraint during
the Carter administration and they culminated in the program
of prospective payment of hospitals enacted in 1983 (DRG’s)