Posted on 09/30/2012 4:34:24 PM PDT by Red Steel
U.S. spending on health insurance grew at an accelerated rate in 2011, breaking a two-year trend of smaller cost increases. The culprit, a new study suggests, is not Americans seeking more treatment but rather rapid growth in the price of medical care.
Spending for private health insurance surged by 4.6 percent in 2011, according to a report from the Health Care Cost Institute. That growth rate is faster than the rest of the economy and higher than the previous year, which had 3.8 percent growth.
Average spending on a private insurance patient rose to $4,547 in 2011, compared with $4,349 in 2010. That statistic suggests that a recent downturn in health care spending may have been a temporary product of the recession rather than a more permanent change, as some health care economists have hoped.
"We don't know yet whether this is a one-off year aberration or a resumption of patterns of higher growth," said Health Care Cost Institute Director David Newman. "We just don't know. When you have one data point, you're cautious."
The Health Care Cost Institute used data from 40 million Americans with private insurance provided by health plans such as Aetna and Kaiser Permanente. The research does not include data on public insurance programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, which the federal government will make available in early 2013.
Employers typically have tried to control costs by reducing the volume of care delivered, whether that means higher co-pays for
doctor visits or using prevention to catch costly diseases earlier.
Those efforts, this report suggests, have succeeded: Inpatient admissions to hospitals actually declined by 0.5 percent between 2010 and 2011.
(Excerpt) Read more at montereyherald.com ...
Just imagine now much worse it would be without ObamaDeathCare.
Snick.
Sure costs rose 4-5G.
But once Q E printing and spending adjusts the currency value, that'll be the equivalent of a coke.
I’m thinking the entire medical industry wants government-run healthcare.
President Ahmed Hussein Cloward-Piven’s plan to overwhelm the system is working out better than his Saudi sponsors could ever have imagined.
Average spending on a private insurance patient rose to $4,547 in 2011
///
i’m getting sick of this !!!
i average $45 a year. ...i can’t afford co-pays!
-
i don’t qualify for food stamps. or free “obama phone”.
-
i’m a single parent.
and yet i pay tens of thousands a year in taxes,
to pay for the health care of illegal immigrants,
and “poor people”,
who eat better than me, and get better health care than me!
Apparently it doesn’t matter according to the polls. High debt, high gas, bad employment, millions more taxed under Obamacare that they said originally, insurance premiums rises, incoming dropping, yet people love dem sum Obama.
I can't imagine spending that much on healthcare on a yearly basis. This number is the aberration. A combination of major surgeries and folks like you & me, who see the Dr. about twice a year.
Wonder where the money is going. Certainly reimbursements aren’t up to either doctors or hospitals.
Here is a huge part of the problem about a real life experience that just happened. A friend of mine needed a CT SCAN — abdominal and pelvic. I told her it would probably be about $600 or so. What a shock. She submitted the approval for her insurance company and the cost was going to be $10,000 with a $3,000 co-pay. That was devastating. I called the clinic to see the cost of getting that scan if I paid cash. It was $450. I had no idea this kind of stuff happens. Why are insurance companies putting up with this? I found this out the day after the scan, and her ex, who had to pay for it, went ballistic and dealt with the clinic. They made a deal at about somewhere around the $500 mark with a $99 co-pay.
Surprise, surprise .... so unexpected!!!!
The insurance/medical system is a huge racket. Period. They’ve brought this upon themselves mostly.
Two simple changes in law would do the trick. 1. Allow free interstate commerce in health care via the Commerce Clause (its original intent was to block states from licensing competition away).
That would allow doctors, pharmacists, nurses, techs, etc. to practice anywhere. It would also allow citizens to purchase insurance from any insurance provider thereby destroying useless mandates and allowing a market to thrive.
2. Medical menus. The only major industry in commerce without public cost disclosure is health care. You have no idea what it will cost and they don’t share the data with you. Transparency in pricing will cause natural competition between providers. Look at cosmetic surgery, lasix, etc. and you see what competition can provide: lower prices or stable prcies with improved quality/outcomes.
We don’t have a free market in health care. It already is social medicine.
My hip and knee replacements cost in excess of 1/4 million. Good thing I had these done in the last 15 months before Obamacare kicks in. Too young to qualify now and in 10 years too old. I wouldn’t have lived another 10 years so it would have been a win, win for the death panels.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.