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Consider the period from 1980 to 2011. Cash income per member of a median income household, which includes items like wages and interest and cash payments from government like Social Security, only grew by about $4,300 or 27 percent over that period, when adjusted for inflation. From 2000 to 2010, it was even negative. Yet according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, per capita personal income—our most comprehensive measure of individual income—grew 72 percent from 1980 to 2011.

nts to 100 gigabytes of data, which is equivalent to 102,400 photos.  Sequencing multiple human genomes would quickly add up to hundreds of petabytes of data, and the data created by analysis of gene interactions multiply those further. 

it was the first company we had seen that flattened out clinical data and matched it with administrative data.”

But one example he gives would be around transparency in hospital practices, identifying trends that would be used compare the costs of one hospital caring for a particular patient with another system in the context of the clinical stream to see what each one is doing differently.

Every health system is in the business of protecting their doctors,” said Miller.

Several hospital chains are driving the boom – including HCA Inc., which will open its seventh ER later this year in Florida, and Wake Med Health and Hospitals, which will add its fourth next month in the Raleigh, N.C., metro area. They regard the facilities as a way to expand into new markets, generate admissions to their hospital and reduce crowding at their hospital-based ERs.

reater Houston has 150 emergency rooms — twice the number as greater Miami -- even though its population is only slightly bigger, according to a KHN analysis.

While the ERs charge insurers double or triple the amount per patient as an urgent care center or doctor's office, patients use them for routine care that could be provided in less costly settings, Ho says. That is the case with standard ERs as well. Yet, insured patients have little incentive to drive past the more expensive, freestanding ERs because their co-payment is only $50 or $100, just modestly more than what it might cost for a visit to an urgent care center or doctor’s office. Their insurers pay the balance generally.

The number of people enrolled in health savings accounts (HSA) has more than tripled in the last six years from 4.5 million people in January 2007 to 15.5 million in January 2013, according to America's Health Insurance Plans, a trade association that represents health insurers.

In the future, Cohen said he expects to see several options used more widely to lower costs, such as rewards for low cholesterol or keeping diabetes under control, incentives to join gyms and benefits for participating in healthy lifestyle programs.

The data also shows that businesses could save money while providing their employees with more choices, he said. Some of those choices, such as closed-network programs or single primary-care physician-based programs, have been avoided in the past because the common wisdom is that people don't like being limited by what doctors they may see.

Medicare covers all those treatment options. By law, it can't consider price when making coverage decisions. Nor can it insist that a new technology be significantly better than existing ones or encourage doctors or patients to seek less-costly alternatives. And once Medicare starts writing checks, private health plans generally follow, distorting the usual market mechanisms, says Arthur Kellermann, a physician and senior policy analyst at Rand Corp.

Another big driver of health-care costs is technology. In almost every other industry, innovation generally makes things more efficient and less costly. But in health care, it often brings higher costs with little added value.

The Minuteman plan would streamline billing processes to save on administrative costs and allow providers to work more closely with employers, organizers said. Information about smoking cessation or workers’ weight collected through employer wellness programs is not typically shared with doctors. “Imagine working closely with an employer who can help us gather data and, with employees’ permission, to be able to share that data with their primary care providers,” said Dr. Jeff Lasker, chief executive of the Tufts physician group, New England Quality Care Alliance.

Partners HealthCare last year announced plans to acquire Neighborhood Health Plan, which mostly serves low-income people. Steward Health Care has worked with Fallon Community Health Plan to develop plans offered at reduced prices through a small business cooperative created by the Retailers Association of Massachusetts.

Unless trends change significantly in 2013, the key determinants of whether a particular physician will be able to avoid a Medicare pay-for-reporting penalty are his or her specialty and the state in which the doctor practices

Once we understand the rules, we are pretty good at playing by them,” said Lee Hilborne, MD, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.

xpanding services to diagnosis and treatment of chronic conditions that affect millions of Americans is a logical step, because the clinics can not only grow their own business, but also partner with hospitals and doctors’ groups to gain new customers, said Ronald L. Hammerle, president of Health Resources, a Florida consulting firm.

A study by Avalere Health found that up to 90 percent of ObamaCare plans will force cancer patients to cover half the cost of new drugs until they hit the out-of-pocket maximum. By comparison, only 29 percent of non-ObamaCare employer-based plans do so.

On average, ObamaCare plans cover only 10 targeted therapies, and insurers don’t have to add new breakthroughs until 2016.

The low profit margins have forced insurers to downsize the number of doctors and hospitals in their networks — and to slash what they cover for out-of-network treatment.

Doctors complain, though, that the savings comes from cutting reimbursement rates, which discourages health care providers from accepting Medicaid patients. The Texas Medical Association also expressed disappointment that Gov. Rick Perry rejected proposals to expand the number of people on Medicaid to include the working poor.

But since the poor and uninsured often rely on expensive emergency room care, Lunsford said hospitals will continue to pass on those costs to the public when those patients don’t pay their bills.

The large number of plans in some places masks the fact that there aren’t that many insurers actually competing. In Miami-Dade County in Florida there are nine insurers selling 137 plans; Florida Blue alone offers 52 of them. Few markets are as competitive as is Miami. Nationwide, 18 percent of counties have only one insurer offering plans and 33 percent of counties have only two insurers competing, the KHN analysis found.

including deductibles, co-payments and which doctors and hospitals are in their networks.