Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 11:31:34 -0700
Downward trend in costs still double the growth of the economy
Health Affairs
June 9, 2004
Tracking Health Care Costs: Trends Turn Downward In 2003
By Bradley C. Strunk and Paul B. Ginsburg
Total health care spending per privately insured person rose 7.4 percent in 2003. This increase was 2.1 percentage points lower than the 2002 increase of 9.5 percent, which was itself slightly lower than the 2001 increase of 10 percent. Therefore, it is now clear that we have entered a period of decelerating cost trends following a steep acceleration during 1996-2001.
Nevertheless, the cost trend remained high by historical standards and continued to outpace U.S. economic growth by a sizable margin. With per capita gross domestic product (GDP) increasing 3.8 percent in 2003, the gap between it and the trend in health care spending remained larger than the average 2.5-percentage-point gap over the past thirty years.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/hlthaff.w4.354/DC1
Center for Studying Health System Change
June 9, 2004
Health Care Spending Growth in 2003 Posts First Major Slowdown in a Decade
Despite Downtick, Health Care Spending Growth Continues to Outpace Economic
Growth
Gail Shearer, director of health policy analysis, Consumers Union:
“Despite a modest slowdown, health care costs continue to rise rapidly, threatening the affordability of health insurance for more and more people. Marketplace changes-combined with recent legislation that provides tax incentives that encourage high-deductible coverage-are steering our health care system further from the goal of spreading costs broadly across the entire population. Tragically, the long-term impact is likely to be increased financial barriers to getting needed health care, placing a growing burden on the sick and those with low-incomes.”
http://www.hschange.org/CONTENT/681/
Comment: “Downward trend” and “slowdown” have little meaning to patients to
whom costs are being shifted in order to relieve the purchasers of the burden of paying for health care costs that are increasing at twice the rate of growth of the U.S. economy.
We clearly need new policies, and single payer sounds more and more like just the right solution.