On March 30, 2010, President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care
Act into law. While many conceptual themes contributed to its formulation, none was
more pervasive than the notion of geographic variation in health care, which was fostered
by researchers associated with the Dartmouth Atlas. It has been taken as “proof” that
health care spending is wasted in regions that spend more and that if practices everywhere
were as efficient as those in regions that spend the least, 30% of health care expenditures
could be saved, enough to finance health care reform: the “30% solution.”
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© 2011 Elsevier Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
