What Explains the Slowdown in Health Care Spending?
Analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Altarum Center for Sustainable Health Spending
Uwe Reinhardt comments:
One concludes from this analysis that both year-to-year fluctuations in national health spending and the longer-term trend in that growth rate are driven primarily by current and prior-year changes in macroeconomic conditions.
And then goes on to qualify that judgment.
I suspect it has to do with employment and peoples’ perception of the economy. People cut back when they are unsure of what the future will bring. Some people lost jobs while others let their individual coverage lapse. It is very interesting.
Uncertainty is more powerful than people realize.
I really need to know why there is some theory that healthcare spending could ever be slowing down or declining, when everything and everyone says otherwise.
Randall, the spending has not slowed down – the rate of growth in spending has slowed down.
Important point, let’s not draw conclusions that aren’t there.
Actual is a bit higher than predicted after 2010, maybe that means something.
The prediction looks very accurate until the early 1980’s, was there a structural change at this point?
Yes the predhttps://portal.eapps.com/aff.php?aff=969ictions are right!
It’s interesting how Prof. Reinhardt describes Mr. Holahan & McMorrow’s result, that:
“macroeconomic conditions certainly were a primary factor in the lower health spending growth in recent years, but that other factors played a role as well, among them growing income inequality and the resulting decline of real income for millions of Americans, a decline in the number of Americans with employment-based health insurance and an accompanying increase in Medicaid enrollment”
Would not the microeconomic consequences described result from macroeconomic weakness?
I have also written about this in the international context. That is, the U.S. has had faster GDP/capital growth than other countries, so U.S. health spending as a share of GDP is higher than other countries. (See http://tinyurl.com/kpmojec.)