Despite spending $2.5 trillion annually, the U.S. has a quality of health care that is not significantly better than other countries’

The act expands health-care coverage for 32 million Americans, but it doesn’t deal with the growth in spending or improvements in the quality of care

To fulfill the promise of access, we need to better coordinate patient care; stop paying for volume, instead of results; and collect better data to make smarter decisions

Other countries have tighter control over health-care costs, but Americans enjoy a level of choice and access that will be difficult to change without strong incentives

The U.S. is where Massachusetts was five years ago when the state redesigned its health-care system to focus on lowering costs and improving care

We use about 43 percent more hospital days than we need to. There’s an accelerating mountain of fixed costs that are being added to hospitals

Many high-tech systems in use today are decades old. But moving to newer technology is expensive and time-consuming, and may have to fall to a new generation of physicians

About 20 percent of the U.S. population uses 80 percent of the health-care resources. Those patients would benefit from integrated health-care systems

Mass screening of the population for health problems is a huge expenditure for very little return. Getting doctors to end that practice will require changes to our legal system

Our panelists believe health care in the U.S. will be more integrated and focused on preventative care, but we’ll still need to work on shrinking the number of uninsured