Encourage healthy lifestyles. It is widely acknowledged that an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, for instance is linked with poor diet, sedentary lifestyles, and smoking Public-education campaigns can be effective-since the 1980s, for instance the United Kingdom and the United States have reduced tobacco consumption per capita by approximately 5o percent But unhealthy lifestyles remain pervasive in most developed Western economies and the health of the overall population continues to deteriorate 2. Promote value-conscious consumption The quality and efficiency of any health care system can be improved through value-conscious consumption, but that is difficult to achieve when customers dont know what constitutes superior quality and what that quality costs and don't have financial accountability for their decisions. Health system leaders should act on two fronts to ensure that decisions about health care consumption are made in the same way as other decisions involving discretionary economic trade-offs Provide information and flexibility to support rational choice. At present, the level of transparency along the dimensions of price, quality, and service isn 't enough to support economically efficient decision making But there has been some progress In the United States, for example, the Centers for Medicare Medicaid Services(CMS) now publishes statistics on the complication and mortality rates at hospitals. However, more information should be made available and consumers should have the ability to select providers freely. Foster consumer accountability. Transparency is a prerequisite for rational choice but won't fully bring it about unless financial benefits and consequences are attached to the resulting decisions. Health care consumption has been isolated from nearly all economic trade-offs through the introduction of third-party intermediaries, yet different providers and treatments often involve vastly different levels of resource consumption-without a corresponding difference in benefits. In other words, consumer accountability is lacking. 3. Analyze under- and overcapacity We found evidence of both under-and overcapacity in different areas of all the health care systems we examined. The most glaring cases of undersupply are in frican countries, where hardly any national health care systems have the resources to purchase adequate supplies of drug gs, equipment, and devices. An example of overcapacity, in contrast, is the large number of MRi scanners per capita in Japan -more than six times as many as in germany or the United Kingdom. While policy makers should try to limit their influence on capacityEncourage healthy lifestyles. It is widely acknowledged that an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, for instance, is linked with poor diet, sedentary lifestyles, and smoking. Public-education campaigns can be effective—since the 1980s, for instance, the United Kingdom and the United States have reduced tobacco consumption per capita by approximately 50 percent. But unhealthy lifestyles remain pervasive in most developed Western economies, and the health of the overall population continues to deteriorate. 2. Promote value-conscious consumption The quality and efficiency of any health care system can be improved through value-conscious consumption, but that is difficult to achieve when customers don’t know what constitutes superior quality and what that quality costs and don’t have financial accountability for their decisions. Health system leaders should act on two fronts to ensure that decisions about health care consumption are made in the same way as other decisions involving discretionary economic trade-offs. Provide information and flexibility to support rational choice. At present, the level of transparency along the dimensions of price, quality, and service isn’t enough to support economically efficient decision making. But there has been some progress. In the United States, for example, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) 1 now publishes statistics on the complication and mortality rates at hospitals. However, more information should be made available, and consumers should have the ability to select providers freely. Foster consumer accountability. Transparency is a prerequisite for rational choice but won’t fully bring it about unless financial benefits and consequences are attached to the resulting decisions. Health care consumption has been isolated from nearly all economic trade-offs through the introduction of third-party intermediaries, yet different providers and treatments often involve vastly different levels of resource consumption—without a corresponding difference in benefits. In other words, consumer accountability is lacking. 3. Analyze under- and overcapacity We found evidence of both under- and overcapacity in different areas of all the health care systems we examined. The most glaring cases of undersupply are in African countries, where hardly any national health care systems have the resources to purchase adequate supplies of drugs, equipment, and devices. An example of overcapacity, in contrast, is the large number of MRI scanners per capita in Japan—more than six times as many as in Germany or the United Kingdom. While policy makers should try to limit their influence on capacity