Annual US Healthcare Spending Will Grow To $5.7 Trillion By 2026, Analysis Indicates.

[MDM4AU 336]

Annual US Healthcare Spending Will Grow To $5.7 Trillion By 2026, Analysis Indicates.

The Washington Post  (2/14, Johnson) reports that according to an analysis  conducted by CMS actuaries and published in Health Affairs, prescription drug spending will increase “faster than any other major medical good or service over the next decade.” Data indicate that “by 2026, national health spending will climb to $5.7 trillion, or nearly a fifth of the economy.” Prescription drug spending is expected “to grow at 6.3 percent per year, on average, between 2017 to 2026.”

        The AP  (2/14) reports that the actuaries point to “an aging population and an uptick in prices for health care services and goods as factors behind the ongoing growth in costs.” Healthcare spending is expected “to rise by an average of 5.5 percent annually through 2026, or about 1 percentage point faster than economic growth.” The article says such increases make it more difficult “for government to pay for programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and for employers to keep financing medical coverage for workers and their families.” 

        Bloomberg News  (2/14, Tozzi) reports that for 2018, “price increases for personal health expenditures are projected to rise 2.2 percent, compared with 1.9 percent for overall inflation.” The article says that recently, “increases in health spending have been driven by volume, as millions more people gained insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act,” and “overall price hikes have been historically low, increasing by an average of 1.1 percent annually between 2014 and 2016.” But that trend is expected to reverse.

        Reuters  (2/14, Abutaleb) reports that this projected “increase represents a sharp uptick from 2017 spending, which the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) now estimates to have been a 4.6 percent climb to nearly $3.5 trillion.” The previous estimate for 2017 had been a 5.4-percent increase.

[shabby 1,958]

The effects of Privatized Healthcare?  Prior to the ACA, weren't healthcare costs growing at about 11% annually? After the ACA, that growth rate appears cut in half (Please correct if my figures are wrong). Doesn't this indicate that privatized medicine just isn't working. I wonder what the cost growth is for healthcare in countries with socialized medicine?

[MDM4AU 336]

ACA did nothing to change the actual cost of services. It was health insurance reform, plain and simple. To credit ACA for a lesser spending increase is faulty. And Medicare is not privatized. That is essentialy a "socialized program" controlled by our government. If the government was the answer, wouldn't Medicare be more efficient and spending be more controlled?

I'm not saying privatized has it completely right, just that ACA and the government have done NOTHING to curb costs of actual services. 

[Grumps 3,705]

Healthcare spending keeps going up so the politicians want to keep changing insurance. They are not that stupid. They don't want to fix the problem.

[HVAU 673]

22 minutes ago, Grumps said:

Healthcare spending keeps going up so the politicians want to keep changing insurance. They are not that stupid. They don't want to fix the problem.

I think we actually agree on something.  As long as the dollars flow from the lobbyists and politicians need it to get elected very little will change.

One of my main reasons for leaving the conservatives is this exactly.  I want to see Citizens United overthrown and I want to see transparency in campaign finance.