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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lucretius who wrote (142235)	1/8/2002 11:21:22 AM
From: patron_anejo_por_favor	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 436258

Breaking news...inflation is dead!<VBG> azcentral.com Health costs skyrocketing Cox News Service Jan. 08, 2002 WASHINGTON - Health care spending is rising at its fastest rate in more than a dozen years and patients are likely to be asked to pay more out of their own pockets, according to a federal report issued Monday. Overall, the nation spent $1.3 trillion on health care in 2000, a 6.9 percent increase over the previous year, when it grew 5.7 percent, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said. The last time health costs grew as quickly was 1987-88 when they went from 8.9 to 12.1 percent. Preliminary data indicate that rising health costs continued in 2001. The average American spent $4,637 on health care in 2000 and likely spent even more last year. Leading the increasing costs are prescription drug prices, which jumped 17.3 percent in 2000 after rising 19.2 percent the year before. Hospital costs also rose substantially last year. After increases hovering just over 3 percent annually in the late 1990s, hospital spending increased 5.1 percent in 2000. "These national health spending estimates may well mark the end of an era of reasonably affordable health care cost growth," the report said. Health care costs have been growing at roughly the same rate as the nation's economy, but in 2000 the rate began to increase from 13.1 to 13.2 percent of the gross domestic product, said Katharine Levit, director of the Centers' National Health Statistics Group. The group's report was published in the January-February issue of Health Affairs, a medical policy journal published by Project HOPE. "Health care costs will continue to grow faster than the economy overall," Levit said. Insurance companies also took a larger chunk of health care spending last year, increasing premiums 8.4 percent overall. Spending for Medicare, the federal health care program for the elderly and disabled, increased 5.6 percent to $224 billion; while spending for Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for the poor, increased 8.3 percent to $202 billion.