Just weeks after the United States stepped back from the brink of default on the federal debt, Health Affairs returns to an old subject: the "new" urgency to lower costs. This volume builds on our September-October 2009 thematic issue, "Bending the Cost Curve," which provided a comprehensive analysis that is as timely now as it was then.Much as that earlier issue concluded that there would be no silver bullets in cost containment, but only "silver buckshot," this one focuses on slices of both the problem and solutions. None of the latter requires any especially new tool, but rather putting known measures in place. Whether that can happen will largely be a function of the collective will of the body politic and the health care delivery system.
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