A second innovation is quality assessment and management. As the saying goes, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it — or improve it. That’s why the federal government is now making key investments to encourage hospitals, clinics and doctors to adopt health information technology and report statistics on quality of care.

Peter Orszag, Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget from 2009-2010 and a distinguished visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, writing in today’s New York Times about health care reform.