The nation’s health care tab hit $3.5 trillion last year, or $10,739 per person, the government reported Thursday. But behind those staggering figures was some fairly good news: The rate of growth slowed for the second year in a row, according to economic experts at the federal Health and Human Services department. Health care spending increased by 3.9 percent in 2017, following a 4.8 percent increase in 2016.
Deep-pocketed hospital, insurance and other lobbies are plotting to crush progressives’ hopes of expanding the government’s role in health care once they take control of the House. The private-sector interests, backed in some cases by key Obama administration and Hillary Clinton campaign alumni, are now focused on beating back another prospective health care overhaul, including plans that would allow people under 65 to buy into Medicare.
A membership-based primary care model, known as “direct primary care,” provides patients with a set number of health care services in exchange for a flat monthly fee. For example, Epiphany Health in North Port, Florida charges $65 per month for an adult membership and $25 for one child. In exchange for that fee, they offer physical exams, EKG testing, strep and urine testing, blood-thinner monitoring, minor surgical procedures, joint injections, and much more. Patients don’t pay a single penny more for these services beyond the cost of their membership fee. When patients need additional tests and services, such as a CT or MRI scan, Epiphany Health has discovered ways to provide these tests at affordable rates, too, by cutting out health insurance companies with third-party partners in the area.
Officials in states across the U.S. showed little interest for years about looking into the black box of pharmacy benefit managers, the pharmacy supply-chain middlemen who have been shrouded in secrecy as they pour billions of dollars worth of prescription drug rebates into state coffers.
According to a new NPR-IBM Watson Health Poll, about one in five people said they have delayed or canceled some kind of health care service, such as a doctor’s appointment or medical procedure, because of cost in the preceding three months. The proportion of people who said cost had deterred them from getting care varied by age, with a third of people under 35 saying it had been a problem compared with only 8% of people 65 and older. The cost of prescriptions also appeared to be a bigger concern for younger people, with 38% of those under 35 saying they had difficulty paying for their medicine. Only 9% of people 65 and older said they had the same problem.
Spending on prescription drugs was nearly flat during President Trump’s first year in office, according to the latest report from nonpartisan government actuaries.
In 2017, drug spending rose by 0.4 percent to $333.4 billion, the Office of the Actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported Thursday. That was the lowest rate of growth in prescription drug spending since 2012, when it was 0.2 percent.
The slowdown in drug spending had begun in 2016, during former President Barack Obama’s final year, after rapid growth during the two previous years.
Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) supports expanding Medicare to people under 65, what’s known as single-payer or Medicare-for-all. But the big question is how to pay for all that health care. Ocasio-Cortez claimed on Twitter that $21 trillion in “Pentagon accounting errors” could have paid for 66 percent of the Medicare-for-all proposal.
However, that $21 trillion is not one big pot of dormant money collecting dust somewhere. It’s the sum of all transactions — both inflows and outflows — for which the Defense Department did not have adequate documentation. This means the same dollar could be accounted for many times. For this, the Washington Post gave Ocasio-Cortez four Pinocchios.
Louisiana’s legislative auditor wanted to know how the state’s expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare was doing, so he picked 100 people who were deemed eligible under the rules.
He found that 82 of them made so much money that they shouldn’t have qualified for the benefits they received.
Auditor Daryl G. Purpera, who issued his findings last month to little fanfare outside of Louisiana, figured if those statistics hold true for the rest of the expanded Medicaid population in his state, then the losses to ineligible beneficiaries could be as high as $85 million.
As health care spending continues to rise, Americans are not receiving the commensurate benefit of living longer, healthier lives. Health care bills are too complex, choices are too restrained, and insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs are climbing faster than wages and tax revenue. Health care markets could work more efficiently and Americans could receive more effective, high-value care if we remove and revise certain federal and state regulations and policies that inhibit choice and competition.