U.S. healthcare is so expensive that records are broken even when cost increases slow.
According to a new report by Milliman, a global consulting and actuarial firm, the total cost of healthcare for the average family of four, if covered by a preferred provider organization, is now a now a record $19,393.
That might be only 7.3 percent higher than last year's average cost of $18.074, which is the smallest year-over-year increase in almost a decade. But it's also the highest year-over-year increase in total dollars spent per family at $1,319.
Trends over the last decade more completely illustrate the toll taken on the average American by rising healthcare costs.
"In 2002, American families had healthcare costs of $9,235, and those costs have now doubled in fewer than nine years," said Lorraine Mayne, Milliman principal and consulting actuary, in a press release. "As costs continue to grow -- and even as the cost trend decelerates -- the total cost of care for American families constitutes a larger and larger portion of the household budget."
Of that $1,319 increase, employers were paid for 48.6 percent of the increase, while the additional 51.6 percent was the responsibility of employees.
That's only slightly different from trends of the last five years. Over that period, employers have absorbed $3,023 in additional healthcare costs, employees themselves absorbing only slightly less, at $2,988.
Nursing Homes Seek Exemptions From Health Law
WellPoint reimbursement increases now tied to hospital quality indicators
Reform could save Medicare $120B over five years
Medicare to run out of money five years sooner, trustees say
Partisan fights in Congress stall panel on primary-health-care shortage
Medicare cost-cutting job could be worst in D.C.
High-paid hospital CEO is a hands-on leader with top patient scores
Comparative effectiveness research threatens medical innovation, group claims
How health reform could fail
It is an oddity of American health care: Many nursing homes and home care agencies do not provide health insurance to their workers, or they pay wages so low that employees cannot afford the coverage that is offered.ACO costs may be far higher than estimated, AHA says
The numbers are stark. Among workers who provide hands-on care to nursing home residents, one in four has no health insurance. Among those who provide care to people living at home, one in three is uninsured.
The new health care law is supposed to fix the problem by guaranteeing access to affordable coverage for all. But many nursing homes and home care agencies, alarmed at the cost of providing health insurance to hundreds of thousands of health care workers, have started a lobbying effort seeking some kind of exemption or special treatment.
WellPoint reimbursement increases now tied to hospital quality indicators
Reform could save Medicare $120B over five years
Medicare to run out of money five years sooner, trustees say
Partisan fights in Congress stall panel on primary-health-care shortage
Medicare cost-cutting job could be worst in D.C.
High-paid hospital CEO is a hands-on leader with top patient scores
Comparative effectiveness research threatens medical innovation, group claims
How health reform could fail
People often ask whether the Affordable Care Act can control costs. In a world where both parties want to use the Affordable Care Act as a vehicle for cost control, the answer is an unqualified “yes.” The law contains, in some form or another, just about every cost control idea on the table today, not to mention procedural reforms, like the Independent Payment Advisory Board, that could speed the introduction of cost control ideas we haven’t thought of. In a world where lawmakers want to control health-care costs, the Affordable Care Act more than empowers them to do so.How health reform could fail, part II
But in a world where one party is committed to sabotaging the Affordable Care Act and sees the inevitable pain of cost control as a continuous political opportunity? Where the nominees to the IPAB find themselves in procedural limbo, with the only respite being hostile interrogation that never results in confirmation because Republicans don’t want the IPAB to exist at all? That’s a world where the law limps along, protected from dying but prevented from thriving. And in that world, it very likely can’t control costs. The hope is that that world is temporary, and if Republicans fail to overturn the law in the next few years, they’ll eventually become more constructive participants in its success. But that’s a big “if.”
Amy Goldstein reports out another example of how Republican opposition to the Affordable Care Act could lead to a worse health-care system, even as it doesn’t undermine the bill itself:Hospitals exaggerate benefits of robotic surgery
The National Health Care Workforce Commission is intended as an ongoing brain trust to focus new energy on solving an old problem that will become increasingly severe. The law says the new commission will analyze primary-care shortages and propose innovations for the government — and medical schools — to help produce the doctors and other health workers the nation needs. The idea is to furnish expertise to counterbalance the intense lobbying of medical groups.The commission is unlike many other aspects of the law, which have built-in money to carry them out. Despite the efforts of some Democratic senators, appropriations for the commission were not in the continuing budget resolution Congress belatedly adopted for the fiscal year that began last fall. President Obama has requested the $3 million in his budget proposal for next year, but Republicans who control the House oppose it.The Wall Street Journal editorial page has been one of many conservative outlets fretting over the fact that more insured people could mean longer waits for primary-care doctors. But as Jonathan Cohn comments, they haven’t run many editorials demanding that House Republicans fund this body even as they work to overturn the underlying law. “It's almost as if the Republicans are more interested in political symbolism than they are in making sure people can see the doctor in a timely fashion,” he says.
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