Lost in the fight over the Affordable Care Act is a bottom line dollars and cents issue about health care in America. The continuing  “sequestration” produces short-term savings, but at the cost of the long-term investment needed to generate greater, sustainable savings in medical care and research down the road. Created without data and without hearings, and using an arbitrary percentage for across-the-board cuts, sequestration has eliminated $45 billion from health care reimbursements over the next decade.