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Mr. Mead cited a report by the Institute of Medicine that tallied more than $760 billion in health care “waste” created annually as a result of consumer fraud, unnecessary procedures and excessive administrative costs.

r. Mead said the campaign also stressed the need for health care providers to shift to a model known as “accountable care,” which shifts their reimbursement models for health care professionals from being paid for the volume of services they perform to being paid based on the outcomes of patient care. Accountable care systems are usually linked to technologies that help health care providers measure performance and manage patient data. Aetna has 27 accountable health care agreements with hospitals and other health care providers around the country.

Bertolini said in the video. “If we fix just 20 percent of it, we could pay for the Affordable Care Act. We could insure everyone without increasing taxes.”

For employees, perhaps the most telling red flag from the study is that their employers may be saving money not by making them healthy but rather by shifting healthcare costs onto them. "Our evidence suggests that savings to employers may come from cost shifting, with the most vulnerable employees — those from lower socioeconomic strata with the most health risks — bearing higher costs that in effect subsidize their healthier colleagues," wrote the authors.

Health insurance costs ate 7.7 percent of total payroll expenses for private-sector employers in 2012, according to the NIHM study.

n 2013, individuals paid, on average, $5,900 in total annual premiums for employer-sponsored coverage. On average, family plans cost more than $16,300. “With employees’ costs for medical coverage growing much more quickly than general inflation, hourly earnings and family income, some workers are inevitably (being) priced out of coverage,” the study said.

2018, 40 million American employees will be enrolled in private exchanges

Thirty percent of companies that provide coverage to Medicare-eligible retirees (age 65 and over) already have moved to exchanges, according to an Aon Hewitt survey of more than 1,230 employers released last month.

For Medicare-eligible retirees, employer benefits are supplemental. Retirees who use traditional fee-for-service Medicare might be offered a Part D (prescription drug) benefit, and a subsidized Medigap plan, which plugs coverage gaps in fee-for-service Medicare. Retirees using Medicare Advantage (all-in-one managed care plans) receive a subsidy toward buying those plans.

oving to exchanges also can help employers avoid the looming risk of the so-called Cadillac tax on rich-benefit insurance plans.

The costs of the 340B program exist of course.  They are initially imposed on insurance companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers.  But, the costs are not confined to just these industries.  The costs created by the 340B program are ultimately integrated into the overall health care system and are manifested through rising insurance premiums, declining insurance coverage, declining innovation and productivity (especially for pharmaceutical drugs), and higher medical costs in unrelated segments of the health care system.  Perhaps more troubling, the added noise created by the 340B cost shifting worsens the overall functionality of the U.S. health care system

A good chunk of Detroit’s debt problem is a health-costs problem. The Detroit Free Press notes that the city has $5.7 billion in unfunded retiree health-care liabilities, nearly a third of the city’s debt.

. It plans to transition its 19,389 retirees into the health law’s new marketplaces, saving the city somewhere between $27.5 million and $40 million annually.

. One report from the Pew Center for the States looked at 61 cities across the country and found that, taken together, they had $126.2 billion in health benefits promised to retirees. Only 6 percent of that amount – $8 billion – currently has funding.