Meanwhile in an attempt to drum up their health plan business and appear smarter than the average consultant bear, Diamond Technology Partners has an interesting press release out. The title basically says it all: Health Insurers Hold Keys to Controlling Soaring U.S. Healthcare Spending But Must Go Beyond Consumer-Directed Health Plans to Stem the Tide

The "keys" are the various techniques that health care payers could use to get health care providers to reduce health care price and utilization. We’ve often talked about what they are, but this may be a first indication that the health plan industry is discussing what they are not, and begining its defense for why CDHPs don’t work, or at least are not enough,

Meanwhile, Henry Aaron who wrote the anti-rationing tome The Painful Prescription in the 1980s, now seems to be backing rationing as the only rational way to live with our growing needs for health care in the future.