Two New Reports Look at Increases in Health Care Spending
Filed under: Medicaid, Medicare, Private Insurance
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The Wall Street Journal reports that CMS estimates overall U.S. health care spending will reach $4.35 trillion in 2018, accounting for one-fifth of GDP. The findings by CMS were published Tuesday in the journal Health Affairs. In 2009, U.S. health care spending is expected to reach $2.5 trillion, a 5.5% increase from 2008.
The CMS study expects government health care spending to increase by 7.4% to $1.19 trillion this year. However, the study forecasts that, by 2016, the government will pay for more than 50% of total health care spending. The increase in government health care spending is expected to come from baby boomers enrolling in Medicare and increased enrollment in Medicaid.
Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that Medicare spending continues to vary widely across the U.S., according to a report to be published today in The New England Journal of Medicine.
According to The Times, Dartmouth researchers found that:
The regional differences in the growth of Medicare spending suggest doctors are helping to drive up costs when they more frequently order tests or admit patients to the hospitals. In areas where there are plenty of hospital beds and sophisticated imaging equipment available, doctors generally spend more on their patients.
Dr. Elliott S. Fisher, the director of the Center of Health Policy Research at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice and one of the work’s authors, told The Times that:
[A]ny attempt to rein in health care costs . . . needs to address how doctors and hospitals are paid, where they are rewarded on the basis of the volume of services they perform.
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