Taming high health costs takes taming high-tech

Expensive technologies like proton beam therapy and hot chemo baths are among the reasons America's health care spending is rising at an unsustainable clip and making the federal deficit so hard to tame. But two of the nation's top healthcare economists are expressing doubts that accountable care organizations -- one of Obama administration's most-hyped mechanisms to save money -- will be able to overcome the medical system's lust for the new new thing. Established through last year's health law, ACOs are networks of doctors and hospitals that would collaborate to provide quality care at lower cost, with the motivation of keeping a share of the savings they deliver to Medicare and private insurers.