Hospital prices always go up. But this year, they went down.

[n2doc]

New federal data shows that the price of hospital care in the United States fell between this January and a year prior — the first time the government has seen a year-over-year drop since it started keeping track in 1998.

The price of hospital care fell 0.1 percent between January 2014 and January 2015, Modern Healthcare reported Thursday morning. When you focus on Medicare prices, the decline gets steeper: prices there fell 2.9 percent over the same time period.

Medical prices getting smaller rather than larger is a big deal. Health wonks typically get excited by something more modest: when health-care prices rise more slowly than they used to. But this new federal data (which is preliminary and could be revised) suggests something even more meaningful: not just slower growth in medical price-tags from one year to the next, but an actual drop in how much care costs.

more

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/19/8071205/hospital-prices-always-go-up-but-this-year-they-went-down

[Vinca]

1. Republicans can't figure this out.

They assume the hospital-bill fairy picks up the tab for the uninsured. Medical costs will go down when the hospital doesn't have to eat a mountain of expenses for the uninsured.

[Fred Sanders]

2. I love Vox. What the mass media should be..not liars.

[n2doc]

3. kick n/t