Health Affairs Article on Reducing Health Care Costs

I thought this was of note (bold is mine):

Drivers of Health Care Costs
One of many factors driving up health care spending is the increase in cost per case:

Charles Roehrig, director of the Center for Sustainable Health Spending at the Altarum Institute and David Rousseau of the Kaiser Family Foundation, conclude that growth in cost per case explains far more of the rise in U.S. health spending than does higher disease prevalence. Roehrig and Rousseau examined the number of people with a given disease--treated or not--and cost per case across medical conditions between 1996 and 2006. They found that during this time, three-fourths of the increase in real per capita health spending was attributable to growth in cost per case, while treated prevalence contributed to one-fourth of spending growth. As a result, they suggest that efforts to reduce future growth in disease prevalence--such as through disease prevention--will not be sufficient to hold down spending growth. This analysis suggests that reducing the growth in how much is spent per case will be essential if we are to tame overall health care spending.