"Medicare can be saved if we could cut the number of people becoming diabetic in half," says George Halvorson, chairman and CEO of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and author of the book, Health Care Reform Now! A Prescription for Change. And it would be cut in half if we walked just 30 minutes a day.

Halvorson's book targets five common chronic conditions—asthma, congestive heart failure, coronary artery disease, depression, and diabetes. Together, these five conditions account for 75 percent of our healthcare spending. We would save $77 billion if we could successfully treat even 1 percent of the people with these chronic conditions. And the key to treatment is influencing behavior. Learn more about this plan at www.fightchronicdisease.org.

These conditions can't be cured, but can be managed using diet, exercise, and other health-related habits. A recent article in Reader's Digest celebrates positive deviants, change agents among us, who are already achieving amazing successes at influencing people to improve their health behaviors. I'll describe just a few.

1. Safeway CEO Steve Burd has used incentives to encourage employees to achieve health goals. Employees who lose weight and stop smoking are rewarded with lower healthcare premiums and gym memberships. So far the company has saved 13 percent and their employees have saved as much as 30 percent on their premiums. Learn more about this plan at www.coalition4healthcare.org.

2. Principal, Yvonne Sanders-Butler, eliminated childhood obesity within her elementary school. She got parents to agree to ban candy, sodas, and sugary snacks from brown bags and school lunches. Lunches and snacks were inspected, and unhealthy treats were replaced with bananas and apples. Kids and parents signed a wellness pledge to exercise and eat right. Kids were rewarded with homework passes and other prizes. Ms Sanders-Butler is now working with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to bring these approaches to more communities. Learn more about this plan at www.healthykidssmartkids.com.

3. The nonprofit group, Minnesota Community Measurement has set standards of care for 14 conditions, and monitors the percentage of patients at each participating clinic that meet these standards. It's up to the doctors and staff at these clinics to influence their patients to comply with the standards. Publishing this data and encouraging clinics to accept the influence challenge has improved compliance among diabetes patients from 4 percent to 11 percent within three years. This would save $1.6 billion a year if it were spread across the nation. Learn more about this plan at www.mnhealthcare.org.

Here's the deal: our healthcare costs are through the roof and it's largely due to chronic health conditions. And, of course, these chronic conditions bring grief to millions of us, our friends, and our family members. The answer involves influencing people to change a few health-related behaviors. These vital changes will accomplish huge cost savings and life improvements. The missing ingredient is influence, but there are dozens of positive deviants (influence geniuses), who have already broken the code. They are using many of the approaches we develop in our book, Influencer. If we take influence seriously and use all six sources, we can achieve these improvements.