You don’t pay $55 for a dozen eggs do you? How about $48 for a gallon of milk? Maybe a nice chunk of change – $134 – for one dozen oranges?

Of course not. That’s ridiculous.

Well, according to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), that’s how much those items would cost today if they inflated at the same rate health care has since 1945. That and similarly staggering information about the costs of health care appear in the IOM’s brief, animated representation of its 2011 report, The Healthcare Imperative: Lowering Costs and Improving Outcomes. 

Don’t simply sit back, shake your head, and expect someone else to fix this. Get involved. Maybe you already are. How are you working to make our healthcare system better, more efficient, less wasteful?