Cost Containment
2 As a program to contain health care expenditures,
health planning was a failure (at least by the
judgment 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)