Real Issues: Health Care Costs

There are issues that get a big workout on the presidential campaign trail: big headlines, big applause lines. And there are a raft of really big issues that barely get touched: from defense spending, to American deficits, to the bottom line of American health care — health care costs.

Other nations spend less and live longer. American health care spending has doubled in the last decade, but the care's not twice as good. You can't fix health care if you can't rein in the cost.

This hour, On Point: coming to grips with a real issue beneath campaign '08 — the cost of health in America out of control.Guests:

Shannon Brownlee, senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of "Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer."

Regina Herzlinger, professor at Harvard Business School and author of "Who Killed Health Care?", she has advised the campaigns of Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator John McCain.