U.S. Health Spending Will Continue To Rise, Reaching 20% Of GDP By 2015

[HuckleB]

U.S. Health Spending Will Continue To Rise, Reaching 20% Of GDP By 2015, Report Says:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=38255

"U.S. health care spending will increase by an average of 7.2% annually until 2015, when spending will reach $4 trillion and account for 20% of the gross domestic product, according to a report released on Tuesday by the National Health Statistics Group at CMS, the Los Angeles Times reports (Girion/Alonso-Zaldivar, Los Angeles Times, 2/22). NHSG Deputy Director John Poisal said, "We can expect to have slight drops (in health care spending) in 2006 and 2007, followed by a slight bump up in 2008 and then a gradual growth after that" (Higgins, Washington Times, 2/22). The report, a Health Affairs Web exclusive, estimates that public and private health care spending will reach about $12,320 per capita in 2015, compared with $6,683 in 2005 (Pugh, Miami Herald, 2/22). In addition, the report estimates that health care spending increased by 7.4% in 2005, compared with 7.9% in 2004 (Corbett Dooren, Dow Jones, 2/22).

...

Paul Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, said, "When spending on health care goes up faster than earnings, lower-paid people are priced out of the health insurance market" (Miami Herald, 2/22). Ginsburg also said that the report was "optimistic" because the authors are "only following current laws on the books, which means they assume there will be continued physician payment cuts in Medicare," adding, "But people don't expect that to happen" (Washington Times, 2/22). Paul Fronstin, an economist at the Employee Benefit Research Institute, said, "It's hard to see where we will see sustained savings" in health care (Los Angeles Times, 2/22). Stephen Heffler, director of NHSG, said that the short-term estimates in the report are "relatively accurate," although the long-term estimates could change as a result of potential revisions to the law or the state of the economy. In addition, Heffler cited the Medicare prescription drug benefit as the "poster child of difficulty" for long-term estimates (Washington Times, 2/22).

..."

[napi21]

1. I've hear this several times in the last several days. WHY????

Has ANYBODY done research to find out WHY healthcare is rising so much faster than anything else?

I've heard one of the reasons is because more people are insisting on "life prolonging measures". I supose that could be true, but I doubt it's the whole story.

Someone needs to research why costs are spiraling and what we can do to stop it!

The only good suggestion I've heard was from Howard Dean during his campaign. He said he would mandate standard coding, because Drs have to sometimes employ several people to do nothing but file claims and reasearch why they were denied. Almost every Ins. Co. has their own coding system which complicates the problem and makes it much more error prone. He would mandate that everyone adopt the medicare coding system. It would save millions and harm no one.

We NEED some more ideas like that!

[HuckleB]

2. We certainly cannot discount insurance bureaucracy.

Nevermind the salaries of insurance execs.

A study released a couple years ago showed that doctors offices had more than doubled their number of front office staff simply to keep up with insurance company bureaucracy.