GE's Healthymagination could help the US reduce health care costs

Lost in all the bank stress test hoopla yesterday was a major announcement from General Electric (GE). The company that wants us all to think green announced that it is also going to spend $6 billion over the next six years on a project called "Healthymagination." The conglomerate is going to spend this money to create products and programs in order to improve health care costs, access and quality.

GE will spend its cash on 100 health care related technologies, like low-cost digital X-ray machines, portable ultrasounds and more affordable cardiac machines. The hope is to lower costs for doctors and hospitals, which would translate to lower costs for families and businesses. This research and development is where GE will invest $3 billion of the dollars by 2015. The company will also work with partners to focus innovations on four critical needs, expand its own employee health efforts and to help increase the "value gap" between its health spending and GE Healthcare's earnings. GE will draw on technology from its entire company, including GE Healthcare, GE Capital, GE Water, NBC Universal, the GE Global Research Center and the GE Foundation.