A blog covering the health/care ecosystem and people.

Health care costs for workers lucky enough to receive health insurance at work nearly doubled since 2002. Wages in that decade grew by 33%. This growing affordability gap between health costs vs. wages is shown in the chart. Health consumers in America sharply perceive this gap, according to an analysis of eight focus groups, Consumer Attitudes on Health Care Costs: Insights from Focus Groups in Four U.S. Cities from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. To health-covered workers, though, health care “costs” are defined as out-of-pocket health spending for insurance premiums, co-payments and deductibles that come out of paychecks and pocketbooks — not

There’s good news on the macro-health economics front: the growth rate in national health spending in the U.S. fell in 2011, according to an analysis published in Health Affairs January 2013 issue. Furthermore, this study found that consumers’ spending on health has fallen to 27.7% of health spending, down from 32% in 2000, based on three spending categories: 1. Insurance premiums through the workplace or self-paid 2. Out-of-pocket deductibles and co-pays 3. Medicare payroll taxes. A key factor driving down health spending is the growth of generic drug substitution for more expensive Rx brands. Generics now comprise 80% of prescribed

What’s keeping seniors up at night when it comes to retirement? #1, according to 6 in 10 seniors, is the future of Medicare, followed by having enough money to enjoy retirement. In particular, 61% of seniors are concerned about future out-of-pocket health care costs. It’s all about Medicare and money for U.S. seniors, found in the Allsup Medicare Advisor Seniors Survey, Medicare Planning and Trends Among Seniors, published in October 2012. Medicare could be the most beloved government program ever, as 89% of seniors say they’re satisfied with Medicare coverage. Given the program’s shaky financial future, Allsup wanted to get

A $10 increase in a health plan premium drove up to 3% of retired University of Michigan employees to leave the plan, according to a study from U-M published in Health Economics, The Price Sensitivity of Medicare Beneficiaries. The U-M researchers analyzed the behaviors of 3,182 retirees over four years, to assess the impact of price on beneficiaries’ health plan choices. During the four years, the premium contribution for retirees increased significantly. The researchers conducted this study, in part, to anticipate how Americans will respond to health insurance exchanges in 2014 as they bring health plan information to the market

U.S. health consumers’ purchase and use of over-the-counter medicines (OTCs) generate $102 billion worth of value to the health system every year. Half of this value accrues to employers who sponsor health insurance for their workforce; 25% goes to government payers (e.g., Medicare, Medicaid); and, 25% returns to self-insured and uninsured people. For every $1 spent on OTCs, $6.50 is saved by the U.S. health system, shown by the chart. For millions of health consumers, OTCs substitute for a visit to a doctor’s office: most cost-savings generated by OTC use are in saved costs of not visiting a clinician, as discussed

Cue up the song “Hey Big Spender” from the Broadway hit, Sweet Charity, when you read the January 2012 AHRQ report with the long-winded title, The Concentration and Persistence in the Level of Health Expenditures over Time: Estimates for the U.S. Population, 2008-2009.” The report’s headline is that 1% of the U.S. population consumed 20% of all health costs spent in the U.S. in 2008 and 2009, illustrated by the chart. These Big Health Spenders tend to be in poor or fair health, older, female, non-Hispanic whites and people with only publicly-provided health insurance. Their mean expenditure was $90,061. The top 10%

The U.S. public’s views on health reform — the Affordable Care Act (ACT) – remain fairly negative, although the percent of people feeling favorably toward it increased from 34% to 37% between October and November. Still, that represents a low from the 50% who favored the law back in July 2010. It’s quite possible that American health citizens’ views on health reform are largely reflective of their more general feelings about the direction of the country and what’s going on in Washington right now, versus what’s specifically embodied in the health care law, according to the November 2011 Kaiser Health

American workers are worried about outliving their savings and not being able to meet the financial needs of their families, according to The 12th Annual Retirement Survey from the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies. The study paints a picture of 4,080 U.S. workers who forecast insecure financial futures. Their personal portraits find them working into older ages than they had previously expected to — before the recession. 54% of workers plan to work in retirement. 39% of workers will retire after age 70, or not at all. It’s not only Baby Boomers who expect to work past 65. Two-thirds of workers in their

“I’m not a class warrior. I’m a class worrier,” Robert Reich told a standing-room only crowd of thousands of health IT geeks as he delivered the first keynote address of the annual meeting of HIMSS, the Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society. This year’s crowd will have reached about 31,000 people interested in health information technology’s transformative role in health care. The 31K represents an 18% increase in attendance from last year’s crowd. The HIMSS economy is strong. Robert Reich warns, however, that the U.S. macroeconomy is far from healthy…and health care costs will be a long-term threat to the

What is a luxury good? A good working definition is a good for which demand increases as income grows. Contrast this to a “necessity good,” something that people need regardless of level of income. Baby Boomers are morphing their idea of what constitutes a luxury good versus a necessity in light of the recession, according to a new study from New York Life, MainStay Investments Boomer Retirement Lifestyle Study, published August 5, 2010. The chart illustrates that 3 in 4 Boomers put health care costs as a top #1 or #2 retirement concern. Furthermore, 98% of Boomers called health care

Seniors are acting like true, Adam Smith-style Rational Economic Man and Woman when it comes to their behavior as Medicare Part D enrollees. They go for the more expensive prescription drug brands when covered by the government; once getting to the ‘donut hole,’ though, seniors opt for lower-cost generics.   Medco Health discovered this in their latest study into Medicare drug trends. Their conclusion is that Medicare could save more money if seniors went for generics 100% of the time.   Rational selection, indeed. In a study from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), Medicare Prescription Drug Plans in 2008 and