Health Affairs
Web Exclusive
11 June 2003
Tracking Health Care Costs: Trends Stabilize But Remain High In 2002
by Bradley C. Strunk and Paul B. Ginsburg
Health care spending per privately insured person increased 9.6 percent in 2002, a slight reduction from the 10 percent increase in 2001. This is the first time in five years that the spending trend did not accelerate. Nonetheless, health care spending grew nearly four times faster than the U.S. economy grew in 2002 (2.7 percent per capita in nominal terms).
Consumers appear to be facing a second round of sizable increases to cost-sharing requirements in 2003. Recent reports of insurers to Wall Street suggest that employers “bought down” their insurance premiums by an average of roughly 3 percent in 2003. This means that insurance premiums would have increased 3 percent more than they did had employers made no changes to their benefit structures. This increase in cost sharing comes on the heels of a 2-3 percent buy-down in 2002.
http://www.healthaffairs.org/WebExclusives/Strunk_Web_Excl_061103.htm
Comment: Health care spending growth under private health insurance is four times the growth of the U.S. economy. That hardly represents stabilization of health care costs. The fact that private health plans remain incapable of containing health care costs is certainly no reason to celebrate. And the current trend to make health care less affordable by shifting more costs to patients is a sick, perverse solution.