Maryland's Next Health Care Experiment

Maryland is embarking on a new health care experiment. Governor Martin O'Malley has announced that his state will cap how much its hospitals are allowed to spend. If the plan works, hospitals will be rewarded for keeping people out their beds, not in them.

Maryland's plan essentially caps all hospital spending at the state's growth rate, which is about half the rate of the revenue growth hospitals have seen in the last 10 years.

Jay Hancock of Kaiser Health News tells Here & Now's Sacha Pfeiffer that the plan is an ambitious one. "One economist told me that this is the most ambitious thing that has been tried to control health care costs in the last 50 years."

For decades, Maryland has been unique in the U.S. for requiring hospitals to charge the same amount for the procedures they perform.