Thursday, July 14, 2016

National Health Expenditure Projections, 2015–25: Economy, Prices, And Aging Expected To Shape Spending And Enrollment

National Health Expenditure Projections, 2015–25: Economy, Prices, And Aging Expected To Shape Spending And Enrollment



Comment by Don McCanne

The Great Recession
has contributed to slowing of the growth in health care spending in
recent years, but the future changes are predicted to be more closely
related to various demographic related coverage changes plus certain
payment trends including the increase in cost sharing in private
insurance plans. Also the increase in the government contribution to our
national health expenditures deserves special mention.

Regarding
increases in patient cost sharing, it is no secret that this has been a
blunt instrument to control spending, resulting in a decline in use of
beneficial health care services. As has been stated repeatedly, we need
more patient-friendly methods of slowing the increase in spending such
as fairer publicly-administered pricing through a single payer national
health program.

The government contribution to
our national health expenditures has increased to 46 percent, but that
does not include two large components of taxpayer-funded government
spending on health care: 1) The government contribution to employee
health insurance on the federal, state and local levels, and 2) the
massive tax expenditures for employer-sponsored health plans (i.e., the
health insurance component of the employee benefit package is not
subject to income taxes, reducing revenue for the government which must
be made up by other taxpayers).

The irony is
that we already pay in taxes devoted to health care alone more than
almost every other nation pays in public and private health care
spending combined. Without increasing our current level of spending we
could pay for a comprehensive, government-financed, single payer
national health program. Yet we continue to support our dysfunctional
financing system that wastes so much on administrative excesses while
perpetuating injustices by misallocating distribution of our health care
resources.

We can and must do better.

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