In this special issue of Health Affairs, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, researchers take a look at the recent slowdown in the growth of health care spending and question whether this slowdown is temporary or here to stay. Their studies examine the major cost drivers associated with health care spending and offer possible solutions that could put Medicare back on track.

• The Slowdown in Health Care Spending in 2009–11 Reflected Factors Other Than the Weak Economy and Thus May Persist
• Policy Makers Will Need a Way to Update Bundled Payments That Reflects Highly Skewed Spending Growth of Various Care Episodes
• Supplement Coverage Associated with More Rapid Spending Growth for Medicare Beneficiaries
• Additional Reductions in Medicare Spending Growth Will Likely Require Shifting Costs to Beneficiaries

This issue of Health Affairs is only one component of a broader RWJF initiative that the Foundation is supporting to tackle the cost conundrum with an array of stakeholders (the Partnership for Sustainable Healthcare); the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Health Care Cost Initiative; a Bending the Curve effort of the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution; and a National Commission on Physician Payment Reform organized by the Society for General and Internal Medicine."  

–John Iglehardt, Health Affairs founding editor