Health care spending is in the news again — as it should be because it’s unfinished business and a growing crisis in America.

Last week it was reported that health care spending in the United States grew 5.3 percent last year, well above the rate of increase of the previous five years.

In any discussion of health care spending, it’s important to remember that the United States spends about twice as much per person on health care compared to other advanced western nations.

Higher costs in U.S. health care spending are found in the price of drugs, the cost of hospital care, the overhead, marketing expenses and high salaries of private health insurance companies and the fee-for-service reimbursement system that rewards more tests and procedures.

Part of higher health care costs clearly is linked to the costs of drugs. As the health care reform debate of 2010 revealed, Americans pay much more for drugs than people in other countries.

Last week, news reports offered some hope for lower drug prices — at least in cases where pharmaceutical companies have gamed the patent system to prevent cheaper generics from being sold.

Big drug companies have sometimes gamed the patent system by paying generic drug companies to not produce a drug coming off patent protection. This is known as pay-to-delay and has contributed to higher medicine prices for Americans. Federal regulators failed in not preventing pay-to-delay or being more aggressive in challenging dubious claims for patent extensions.

But recently, there have been encouraging developments — the government has begun to take action. The Federal Trade Commission recently won a $1.2 billion settlement with Teva Pharmaceutical over pay-to-delay.

Yet more encouraging news emerged last week from an unlikely location — Wall Street. The New York Times reported that a former hedge fund manager who made billions of dollars in profits betting against subprime mortgages, is now betting against pharmaceutical companies that have gamed the patent system.

The former hedge fund executive and a partner with expertise in patent law have formed the Coalition for Affordable Drugs and plan to file lawsuits over drug patents they believe are bogus.

One practice they hope to end is known as “evergreening” which is the term used when a pharmaceutical company makes a minor change to a drug — sometimes something as simple as changing the dosage or color of the pill — then convinces federal authorities to extend patent protection.

That behavior is a sham, and it prevents cheaper generic drugs from entering the market.

The duo behind the Coalition for Affordable Drugs will do more than just file lawsuits to challenge weak or abusive drug patents. They also plan to bet against the targeted drug companies, by “shorting” the stock to profit if the share prices fall.

Wall Street bankers earned public scorn for their role in sub-prime mortgages and the 2008-09 financial crisis, but this is one case where a few bankers might do some good — getting the courts to do what the patent office and federal regulators have failed to do — preventing, challenging or voiding bogus patents on medicines. If they succeed, they might make a lot of money for themselves, but they also will save patients and health care programs billions of dollars.

This sort of effort should be repeated in other areas to reduce the cost of health care spending in the United States.

Allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices is another obvious effort, an action Congress forbid in the Medicare Part D legislation, proving the political power of the pharmaceutical industry.

It’s ironic that new hope for reducing health care spending is coming from two Wall Street guys. Congress, Washington regulators and President Obama have failed to reduce health care costs in America — costs that are a burden on individuals, companies that provide health care benefits to their employees and all taxpayers.