Washington Post Examines Impact of Rising Health Costs Nationwide

The Washington Post on July 9 examines the nation's "rapidly rising" health care costs, which have contributed to state budget deficits, reduced company profits and physician salaries and forced patients to make "painful choices." The health care "crunch" has affected almost every region, industry and socioeconomic group nationwide, the Post reports. Many experts predict that employees will have to "bear an increasing share of the financial burden" for their health care. According to a study conducted by the Center for Studying Health System Change, health insurance premium rates, which increased 11% nationwide in 2001, could increase 13% this year. A survey conducted by Hewitt Associates found that HMO rates increased an average of 15.3% this year and could increase 20% in 2003. The United States spent an average of $4,358 per capita on health care in 1999, compared with an average of $1,764 per capita in the other 29 industrialized nations, the Post reports. Health care analysts attribute the increased spending in part to hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and malpractice attorneys, as well as an aging population, expensive new technology and a "backlash" against managed care. However, analysts agree that the one "overarching" cause of increasing health care expenditures is "Americans' insatiable appetite for each and every medical test and treatment available." Patients with health insurance are "primarily insulated from the true costs" of health care, Patricia Salber of Kaiser Permanente said. Dartmouth Medical School Dean John Baldwin added that doctors may conduct expensive tests and treatments on asymptomatic patients, which often lead to additional tests and "risky procedures." Doctors and patients must become "more aware of the real costs" of health care to "bring some rationality to the system," Tom Miller, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute said, but other experts predict that "consumer-driven care" would lead to more "unnecessary spending, not more traditional preventive medicine that leads to better health" (Washington Post, 7/9).