TINSTAAFL or TISATAAFL?

Better Care, Lower Cost  - Atul Gawande in the New Yorker.  This article interested me because it is exactly what I hope for in pushing for a restructuring the Healthcare District (not the specific technique described here, but the concept that better outcomes are possible while saving money.)

I used to teach economics 101 and one of the first concepts that is covered is the production possibility frontier.  The idea is that a rational economy will produce goods and services so that no more of any one good can be produced without sacrificing production in another area (ofter referred to as guns or butter).  In economics 101, the modern capitalist economy always produces on the ppf and never inside the ppf because if production was inside the ppf then free lunch would be a reality and TINSTAAFL is an axiom for many economists.  Well, in US healthcare, there are a lot of free lunches because the system is so dysfunctional; here is just one example called "hotspotting".