Health Care Spending Grows : Private Spending Lessens

Leaving health care spending up to the individual is out of the question. The entire Affordable Heath Care system, ObamaCare, was designed to eliminate individuals making decisions. With a health care system that forces citizens into a health care situation that is more expensive with less quality ensures the system that will fail to delivery needed care, and which as intended, will lead to a 'single payer' system totally controlled by government.

It appears that our new congress doesn't have will to stop the nightmare that is ObamaCare even thought the voters elected to do just that. It now rest on the decisions by the supreme court regarding the bill it self and how it has been illegally changed.

If the court rules that the Affordable health care act must be implemented as written, then  it will fail as the individual mandate for subsides in the states will be the factor that kills the bill.

Government Health Spending Growth Outstrips Private Sector Growth
Source: Linda Gorman, "Government Health Spending Growth Outstrips Private Sector Growth in Both the UK and the US," NCPA Health Policy Blog, February 10, 2015.

February 13, 2015 lessom

When the government gets involve in health care, what happens to spending? At the NCPA Health Policy Blog, Senior Fellow Linda Gorman has analyzed public and private health care spending in the United Kingdom and in the United States. The results?

• From 2000 to 2012, inflation-adjusted public spending on health care in the United Kingdom increased by 68 percent, while private spending increased by 26 percent during that period.
• At the same time, the United Kingdom had a 7 percent increase in population growth.
• In the United States, public health care spending rose 67 percent from 2000 to 2012. Over that same time period, spending in the private sector rose 44.5 percent.
• At the same time, the United States had a 9.7 percent increase in population.

Gorman says public health spending in the United States includes spending on Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans Administration, the Department of Defense health program, school health programs, the Children\'s Health Insurance Program, workers\' compensation and more.

In short, it's difficult for the public sector to control health care spending. What does limit spending? Giving consumers more control over their own health care dollars. For example, health savings accounts (HSAS) have been shown to reduce consumer spending on health care.

Why? People are always more careful with their own dollars than with someone else's, and when patients have control over their money, they look for cost-effectiveness. In a health care system in which a third party is paying for someone's health care, patients face less incentives to reduce costs or limit their spending.