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Growth In U.S. Health Care Spending Slows
Despite the slowdown, the share of household personal income spent on health care rose from 5.4 percent in 2001 to 6 percent in 2005, the report found.
In fact, out-of-pocket spending for health care rose to $249.4 billion in 2005, compared with $235.8 billion in 2004 and $224.5 billion in 2003, according to the report. While the bulk of the increase came from expenditures for hospitals, physicians and clinical services, prescription drug payments were the largest component (20.4 percent).
"Health care is eating more and more of a family's budget, and that's not good news in spite of the fact that health expenditures may have slowed," said Mark Rukavina, executive director of The Access Project in Boston, a national resource center providing support to local groups seeking to improve access to health care.
"Employers are seeking cost savings, not increasing the share of premiums paid by employers but increasingly using co-insurance, deductibles and eliminating coverage for treatment or prescription drugs," he noted.
According to the government's report, health-care spending now accounts for about 16 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, up from 15.9 percent in 2004. That translates to $6,697 per person. And total health-care spending is now estimated to reach $2.2 trillion in 2006.
The rate of health spending growth is down from 7.2 percent in 2004 and 8.1 percent in 2003. And that decline is driven primarily by prescription drug spending, which grew only 5.8 percent.
"Prescription drugs are growing slower than the rest of health care for the first time since the early 1990s," said Stephen Heffler, co-author of the study and director of CMS' National Health Statistics Group. "It peaked in 1999, just six years ago, at 18.2 percent."
The slowdown was caused by a deceleration in Medicaid drug spending, changes in therapy regimens, tiered copayment benefit plans, and increased use of generic drugs, the economists noted. The decrease in Medicaid drug spending growth, which slowed from 11.6 percent in 2004 to 2.8 percent in 2005, "was caused by cost-control initiatives in many states, as well as states increasing rebates with manufacturers," Catlin said.
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