5 Key Findings on U.S. Health Spending

The CMS Office of the Actuary has conducted an analysis of personal healthcare spending from 2002 and 2010.

moneyThe study, published in Health Affairs, examines healthcare spending by gender and five age groups: children (ages 0 through 18), working-age younger adults (ages 19 through 44), working-age older adults (ages 45 through 64), and two elderly groups (ages 65 through 84 and ages 85 and older). The Office of the Actuary defines personal healthcare spending as consisting of all the medical goods and services used to treat or prevent a specific disease or condition for a specific patient.

Here are five of the study's key findings.

1. In 2010, total personal healthcare spending in the U.S. reached $2.2 trillion ($7,097 per person).

2. Females accounted for 56 percent of personal healthcare spending in 2010 at $7,860 per person. That's roughly 25 percent more per capita than spending for males. Still, the spending gap between the genders has been shrinking: In 2004, the spending per capita for female patients was 29 percent more than spending for males.

3. On a per capita basis, working-age women spent more than men in the same age bracket for hospital, physician and clinical services, primarily because of pregnancies among those between the ages of 19 and 44, according to the study. Women in the same age group also spent 47 percent more than men on retail prescriptions, in part because of spending on drugs for depressive disorders, multiple sclerosis, mood disorders, migraine headaches and oral contraceptives. Meanwhile, per capita spending for men aged 45 to 64 was 20 percent greater than spending on women the same age, partly because of spending on procedures to treat heart disease.

4. Average healthcare spending increases with age. In 2010, people 65 and older spent $18,424 per person on personal care, three times more than the average working-age adult and approximately five times more than the average child.

5. However, from 2002 to 2010, spending for people 65 and older increased at the slowest annual rate (4.1 percent) compared with other age groups, while spending on children grew the fastest (5.5 percent per year). Healthcare spending for people ages 19 to 64 grew 5.2 percent annually. Slow growth among the elderly was partly due to sluggish growth in spending on nursing care as states, through Medicaid, sought to keep the elderly out of institutional care.

More Articles on Healthcare Spending:
4 Talking Points on America's Healthcare Spending  
Healthcare Spending Surges 9.9% in First Quarter
5 Observations on the Economy

 

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