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Tuesday, January 08, 2013

Fox News: Healthcare spending not growing rapidly, but we spend more than any other nation

A recent report on Fox News (from the AP) says that healthcare spending, which has been growing faster than the economy for several years, has only been growing about as fast as the economy for the past three years, which is good news. The fact that the US still spends ". . . far more than any other economically advanced country spends" is not good news. And that was in 2011, before much, if any, of so-called Obamacare took effect.

The report goes on to say that this would be a good time for Congress and the President to do something serious about the growth of healthcare spending, which most likely will go back to increasing soon, if they don't.

Thanks for reading.

For more information on healthcare spending, see a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has several useful tables and graphs, and also this Wikipedia article.

2 comments:

atlibertytosay said...

I wonder if this encompasses non elective surgeries and cosmetic surgery. I also wonder if the rising cost of abortions has any bearing on these figures.

Martin LaBar said...

No doubt all of these items contribute, but I don't think they are major contributors. Taking care of an aging population is a major contributor, according to a report by the Kaiser Family Fund: http://www.kff.org/insurance/upload/7670-03.pdf

Average spending per person for those 65 and older is almost twice as much as for those 45-60, and over three times as much as for those 25-44.

Thanks.