HealthCents

Its impossible to avoid the fact that health care in this country is in crisis. Rising medical costs are a worldwide problem, but nowhere are they higher than here in the United States. And while Americans with good health insurance get the best medical care in the world. Our health, when measured by life expectancy and infant mortality is below the average of other major industrialized countries.

America leads the world in expensive diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, such as organ transplants, heart bypass surgery and magnetic resonance imaging. At the same time many point to Canada as a model system for curtailing those costs, Orange County, California, for example, has more MRI machines than does the entire country to our north. Yet, the fastest growing segment of health care costs is prescription drugs, which is increasing at an average rate of 11.2 percent every year.

There is no question something must be done. The question remains how do we do it. We start at home. Below are 13 stories on how you can cut your own medical costs. Little steps that can have a big impact on your health care dollars. It's called, "HealthCents."