Health Costs Will Keep Rising, U.S. Says, Along With Government Share

[Rose Siding]

The Bush administration predicted Wednesday that government would account for nearly half of all the nation's health care spending by 2014.

Further, it said, total health spending will double in a decade, to $3.6 trillion in 2014 from $1.8 trillion last year, while gross domestic product, the total output of goods and services, grows more slowly. As a result, health spending will constitute 18.7 percent of the economy by 2014, up from an estimated 15.4 percent last year, the administration said.

The public share of health spending has been climbing gradually for decades. When Medicare and Medicaid were created in 1965, public programs accounted for 25 percent of all health spending in the United States. By 2014, they will account for more than 49 percent of the total - "a record share that could have important implications for the budget as a whole," said Stephen K. Heffler, director of the national health statistics group at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Last year, public programs accounted for 46 percent of all health spending.

Mr. Heffler and Richard S. Foster, the chief Medicare actuary, supervised preparation of the new estimates, published Wednesday on the Web site of the journal Health Affairs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/national/24health.html?ex=1266987600&en=81af6be84856118f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

[cthrumatrix]

1. not true....the Govt reported the CPI numbers yesterday....no inflation

(sarcasm off)

[wishlist]

2. U.S. policies have allowed healthcare industry to be hugely profitable

Just look at that Medicare drug legislation Congress passed. It does not even let the federal government negotiate with drug companies to get the best prices for prescription drugs.

Maintaining high profits for the health care industry has always had too high a priority compared to keeping costs reined in and affordable. Our politicians have allowed the escalating ripoffs to occur.

[EVDebs]

3. "The Benefits Trap" Businessweek July 2004 shows globalization

is causing this problem

www.businessweek.com/magazine/ content/04_29/b3892001_mz001.htm

""Perhaps most important, in the global economy, long-established U.S. companies are competing against younger rivals here and abroad that pay little or nothing toward their workers' retirement, giving the older companies a huge incentive to dump their plans.""

Globalization is driving the multinational/offshoring/outsourcing companies to use the excuse that first world workers have to be stripped of pension and healthcare benefits in order to 'compete' with low-cost third-world labor markets.

In other words compete with ... themselves. The money mainly ends up 'on paper' jacking up the stock prices and CEO pay packages. The Race to the Bottom...

The ONLY way out is single-payer nationalized healthcare but neocons can't bring themselves to allow this for ideological reasons. By destroying the healthcare 'marketplace' they make the nationalized case for us and erase their own credibility !

Amazing, since the realization that destroying Social Security with privatization plans is slowly sinking in. The neoconservatives are making the case that "all for one, one for all" is the only fiscally sound way to avoid market-induced waste and market-induced business cycle downswings that hurt real people !

We should be thanking neocons for helping make the progressive case for national plans in healthcare and pensions SO OBVIOUS !

[Colorado Blue]

4. I'm curious - what would happen to health care costs if

NOBODY had insurance? I'm thinking that part of the upward spiral of costs is CAUSED by insurance. This allows costs to be padded, profits to grow beyond all reason - and people will pay ridiculously high costs via their INSURANCE.

I'm thinking, if it had to come out of people's actual POCKETS costs would drop like a rock.

Obviously this wouldn't be practical because poor/middle class people couldn't afford any health care at all in the short run. But I think the insurance industry is contributing bigtime to the bulge in costs.

It's a simple supply/demand situation in a sense.

Curious if this makes any sense?

[Willy Lee]

5. But SS is in crisis!!!!

Just don't get sick.